Glial Cells in Alzheimer's Disease: Preferential Effect of APOE Risk on Scattered Microglia

Reactive glial cells are consistently found in the brain tissue of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. Both clustered and scattered glial cells occur in AD brain. A number of clustered microglial cells, but not astrocytes, had a positive correlation with neurite plaque numbers, suggesting that clustered micro-glial cells are uniquely associated with plaques whereas clustered astrocytes may have functions outside the plaques as well. APOE epsilon 4, the major genetic risk factor for AD, had a dose-dependent effect to increase the numbers of scattered microglial cells whereas the APOE risk showed no correlation with any of the clustered glial cells or scattered astrocytes. These findings raise the possibility that the increased levels of scattered, but not clustered, microglial cells are the immediate response to APOE risk and might be primarily involved in AD pathogenesis.