Polyglutamine-containing microglia leads to disturbed differentiation and neurite retraction of neuron-like cells.

Expanded polyglutamine-containing proteins in neurons intrinsically contributes to neuronal dysfunctions and neuronal cell death in polyglutamine (polyQ) diseases. In addition, an expanded polyQ-containing protein in microglia also leads to apoptosis of neurons. However, detailed morphological analysis of neurons exposed to conditioned medium (CM) derived from polyQ-containing microglia has not been essentially carried out.