Reprogramming the Damaged Brain to Mop Up Plague and Other Toxins.

When microglia start losing their way the result can be brain inflammation and damage to neurons and the net- works they form. Ordinary immune cells cannot cross the blood- brain barrier, so it is the task of healthy microglia to clear out waste and toxins, keeping neurons functioning at their best. The discovery of how to shift damaged brain cells from a diseased state into a healthy one poses a new potential path to treating Alzheimer's dis ease and other forms of dementia, according to a collaborative study from researchers at the University of California-San Francisco and Weill Cornell Medicine. [Extracted from the article]

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