The approach could help test hypotheses about how atypical function of the brain’s immune cells contributes to autism.

Dialing up the activity of a protein called SYK in the brain’s “janitors” could provide an avenue to treat Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.

In stressful conditions, specialized protein complexes in microglia induce neurotoxic activity in astrocytes that leads to the change in behavior.

Mammals that give birth to live young may have evolved to make use of the remnants of viruses in their genomes to ward off pathogens, a study suggests. 

Research traces the evolution of a gene variant that reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, finding that it originally evolved in response to infectious bacteria.

Niacin, a form of vitamin B3 used to treat cardiovascular disease, helps immune cells in the brain fight neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s in mice models, according to recent studies. Researchers hope that human clinical trials will swiftly follow.

Researchers find a way to wipe out the brain’s immune cell corps and send in new and improved versions.

Making specific alterations to the bacterial population in a rat’s lungs either better protects the animals against multiple sclerosis–like symptoms or makes them more vulnerable, a study finds—the first demonstration of a lung-brain axis.

Data from mouse models for mild coronavirus infections and human tissue samples offer further evidence that it doesn’t take a severe infection—or even infection of brain cells at all—to cause long-term neurological symptoms.

Pharmaceutical companies ramp up efforts to get the brain’s immune cells to help treat Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions, but not everyone agrees the approach will be effective.

In both a mouse model and the hospital records of more than 3 million children, researchers found a connection between strong immune activation in males and later symptoms of autism spectrum disorder.

Genetic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic data reveal molecular mechanisms tying these disorders to each other and to immune disfunction.

A dysfunctional lymphatic system, described as a clogging of the brain’s sink, may explain why immunotherapies fail in some Alzheimer’s patients.