Lower Counts of Astroglia and Activated Microglia in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease with Regular Use of Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs

Abstract

Epidemiological studies have indicated that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) may have some therapeutic effect in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and experimental studies have shown that microglia activation by Abeta-peptide (Abeta-peptide. Furthermore, our results indicate that regular NSAID use is associated with significantly lower counts of astrocytes and a trend of lower counts of activated microglia in the brain tissue. The influence of NSAID use was noted in all ApoE genotypes however the trend of lower counts of glial cells with regular NSAID use was more marked in patients carrying the ApoE varepsilon 4/4 alleles. Based on our results one would anticipate that regular NSAID dosing could have a beneficial effect on the progression of the disease. However, the fact that we failed to observe significant differences for activated microglia might indicate an age or stage dependent difference in the glial response i.e. in their activation rate. More studies into age and stage related factors influencing the glial response are required if one is to devise novel pharmacological treatment strategies for AD.