IMR Press / FBS / Volume 7 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.2741/S433

Frontiers in Bioscience-Scholar (FBS) is published by IMR Press from Volume 13 Issue 1 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.

Review
Ageing, neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration
Show Less
1 Centre for Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration, Division of Brain Sciences, Imperial College, London UK.
2 Universite catholique de Louvain, Belgium

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

 

Front. Biosci. (Schol Ed) 2015, 7(1), 189–204; https://doi.org/10.2741/S433
Published: 1 June 2015
Abstract

During ageing, different iron complexes accumulate in specific brain regions which are associated with motor and cognitive dysfunction. In neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, changes in local iron homoeostasis result in altered cellular iron distribution and accumulation, ultimately inducing neurotoxicity. The use of iron chelators which are able to penetrate the blood brain barrier and reduce excessive iron accumulation in specific brain regions have been shown to reduce disease progression in both Parkinson’s disease and Friedreich’s Ataxia. Neuroinflammation often occurs in neurodegenerative diseases, which is mainly sustained by activated microglia exhibiting the M1 phenotype. Such inflammation contributes to the disease progression. Therapeutic agents which reduce such inflammation, e.g. taurine compounds, may ameliorate the inflammatory process by switching the microglia from a M1 to a M2 phenotype.

Keywords
Iron
inflammation
Microglia Parkinson’s Disease
Alzheimer’s disease
Multiple Sclerosis
Review
Share
Back to top