Microglia cytoarchitecture in the brain of adenosine A2A receptor knockout mice: Brain region and sex specificities

Microglia cells exert a critical role in brain development, mainly supported by their immune functions, which predicts an impact on the genesis of psychiatric disorders. In fact, microglia stress during gestation is, for instance, associated with chronic anxiety and cognitive deficits accompanied by long‐lasting, region‐ and sex‐specific changes in microglia morphology. We recently reported that the pattern of microglia morphologic plasticity, which is sex‐determined, impacts on anxious‐like behaviour and cognition. We also reported that the pharmacologic blockade of adenosine A2A receptors (A2AR) is able to reshape microglia morphology, in a sex‐specific manner and with behavioural sequelae. In order to better understand the role of A2AR in the sex differentiation of microglia, we now compared their morphology in wild‐type and A2AR knockout male and female C57BL/6 mice in two cardinal brain regions implicated in anxiety‐like behaviour and cognition, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the dorsal hippocampus (dHIP). We report interregional differences between PFC and dHIP in a sex‐specific manner: while males presented more complex microglia in the dHIP, microglia from females had a more complex morphology in the PFC. Surprisingly, the genetic deletion of A2AR did not alter these sex differences, but promoted the exclusive remodelling (increase in complexity) in PFC microglia from females. These findings further support the existence of a heterogeneous microglial network, distinct between sexes and brain regions, and help characterizing the role of A2AR in the sex‐ and brain region‐specific morphologic differentiation of microglia.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  European Journal of Neuroscience

• Publication date

  2020-03-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1111/ejn.14561PMID 31454441
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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