Archival ReportMicroglial Activation and Increased Microglial Density Observed in the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex in Autism
Section snippets
Tissue Acquisition
Fifteen autism cases and 9 control cases were examined (Table 1). Two of the autism cases, a young female and a severely macrencephalic male, were segregated from the quantitative assessment group a priori. The quantitative assessment autism group was comprised of all male cases with suitable formalin-fixed dlPFC tissue available from the national brain banks and the Courchesne laboratory collection. Twelve of the 15 autism cases were diagnosed with autism via the Autism Diagnostic
Results
Microglial cell morphology was strongly altered (++) in 3 of 13 autism cases (Figure 1). Moderate alterations (+) were observed in 2 autism cases, both of which were under 6 years of age. Minor alterations (0/+) were observed in an additional 4 of 13 autism cases and 1 of 9 control cases; some of these alterations may reflect modest perimortem morphological changes. The alterations extended from the pial surface to deep white matter and were primarily characterized by somal enlargement and loss
Discussion
Moderate to strong alterations in Iba-1 positive microglial morphology indicative of activation (13, 29) are present in 5 of 13 postmortem cases with autism, and mild alterations are present in an additional 4 of 13 cases. These alterations are reflected in a significant increase in average microglial somal volume in white matter and microglial density in gray matter, as well as a trend in microglial somal volume in gray matter. These observations appear to reflect a relatively frequent
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Authors EC and IPE contributed equally to this work.