I am very interested in musculoskeletal medicine in primary care, as well as conditions related to sports and exercise. I started working as a salaried GP at Eastfield Medical Centre in January 2007. My training included rotations in A+E, psychiatry and an innovative post in musculoskeletal medicine. I initially worked as a Senior House Officer in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, completing posts in General Medicine, Paediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, before joining the GP training scheme in Scarborough. After working for four years as a GP in a busy inner city practice as well as a branch surgery consisting of a converted shack in an informal settlement, I got married and we decided to move to the UK. In this review, we will focus on astrocytes and microglia.I completed my medical training at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and my internship in the rural town of Umtata in the Transkei, which is in the Eastern Cape Province. Each population of glial cells is specialized for a particular function in the central or peripheral nervous system ( García-Cabezas et al., 2016), and normal brain function depends on the interplay between neurons and the various types of glial cells.
Glial cells are categorized into two main groups macroglia, which includes astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, NG2-glia and ependymal cells, and microglia which are the resident phagocytes of the central nervous system (CNS). Due to their lack of electrical activity, it was previously assumed that glial cells primarily functioned as “nerve-glue” ( Virchow, 1860) and performed house-keeping functions for neurons however, this concept has shifted due to recent findings showing glia are key components in many neuronal functions that go far beyond housekeeping ( Araque et al., 1999 Buskila et al., 2019a). Glia are non-neuronal cells of the nervous system which do not generate electrical impulses yet communicate via other means such as calcium signals.
We will discuss the nature of each glial malfunction, its specificity to each disorder, overall contribution to the disease progression and assess its potential as a future therapeutic target. While there is compelling evidence for glial modulation of synaptic formation and regulation that affect neuronal signal processing and activity, in this manuscript we will review recent findings on neuronal activity that affect glial function, specifically during neurodegenerative disorders. Recent advances have demonstrated that glial cells, specifically microglia and astroglia, are involved in several neurodegenerative diseases including Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease (PD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Moreover, as glia are key players in the brain immune system and provide structural and nutritional support for neurons, they are intimately involved in multiple neurological disorders. Glia, a non-excitable cell type once considered merely as the connective tissue between neurons, is nowadays acknowledged for its essential contribution to multiple physiological processes including learning, memory formation, excitability, synaptic plasticity, ion homeostasis, and energy metabolism.
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