Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 12|pp 12251—12267

Heterogeneity in brain distribution of activated microglia and astrocytes in a rat ischemic model of Alzheimer’s disease after 2 years of survival

Lidija Radenovic¹, Marija Nenadic¹, Marzena Ułamek-Kozioł², Sławomir Januszewski², Stanisław J. Czuczwar³, Pavle R. Andjus¹, Ryszard Pluta²

¹Center for Laser Microscopy, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
²Laboratory of Ischemic and Neurodegenerative Brain Research, Mossakowski Medical Research Centre, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
³Department of Pathophysiology, Medical University of Lublin, Lublin, Poland

Received: March 18, 2020Accepted: May 1, 2020Published: June 5, 2020

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103411

Copyright © 2020 Radenovic et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The present study was designed to follow neuroinflammation after ischemic brain injury in the long-term survival rat model. Immunohistochemistry was performed 2 years after 10 min global brain ischemia due to cardiac arrest. For the visualization of the cellular inflammatory reaction microglial marker Iba1 and astrocyte marker GFAP were used. In post-ischemic animals our study revealed significant activation of astrocytes in all tested brain regions (hippocampal CA1 and CA3 areas and dentate gyrus, motor and somatosensory cortex, striatum and thalamus), while microglial activation was only found in CA1 and CA3 areas, and the motor cortex. In the specifically sensitive brain areas microglia and astrocytes showed simultaneously significant activation, while in the resistant brain areas only astrocytes were activated. Thus, there was clear evidence of less intensive neuroinflammation in brain areas resistant to ischemia. Such neuroinflammatory processes are backed by microglia and astrocytes activity even up to 2 years after ischemia-reperfusion brain injury. Our study thus revealed a chronic effect of global cerebral ischemia on the neuroinflammatory reaction in the rat brain even 2 years after the insult.