Background: Neuroinflammation, and specifically microglia, plays an important but not-yet well-understood role in the pathophysiology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), constituting a potential therapeutic target for the disease. Recent studies have described the involvement of different microglial transcriptional patterns throughout neurodegenerative processes, identifying a new state of microglia: disease-associated microglia (DAM). The aim of this study is to investigate expression patterns of microglial-related genes in ALS spinal cord.

Methods: We analyzed mRNA expression levels via RT-qPCR of several microglia-related genes in their homeostatic and DAM state in postmortem tissue (anterior horn of the spinal cord) from 20 subjects with ALS-TDP43 and 19 controls donors from the Navarrabiomed Biobank.

Results: The expression levels of , , , and were found to be elevated in the spinal cord from ALS subjects versus controls (-value < 0.05). However, no statistically significant gene expression differences were observed for , and .

Conclusions: This study suggests that a DAM-mediated inflammatory response is present in ALS, and plays a significant role in immune function of microglia. It also supports the role of and in the physiopathology of ALS.

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10669775PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biomedicines11112994DOI Listing

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