”Guardians of the frequency”: the emerging anti-epileptogenic role of microglia.

With 65 million people suffering from epilepsy, it is the most common, chronic neurological disease, thus it also represents a major social burden, both in terms of clinical price, but mostly in terms of stigma and misunderstanding for patients suffering from it. It is indeed possible to pharmacologically and successfully treat epilepsy, yet one-third of patients are not responsive to the available medicinal treatments, without forgetting low and middle-income countries, for which possibilities are certainly lacking. It is therefore evident the urge and the need for deeper analyzing molecular mechanism underlying this pathological event in order to develop better therapies. Microglia (resident immune cells in the CNS) are now well known to play a key role in synaptic plasticity both in development and in adult brains. Microglia monitor and protect neuronal function, and mechanisms allowing microglia to do so are now starting to be elucidated. These cells’ functions are disrupted in a wide variety of neurological diseases, especially in neurodegenerative ones, to which neuroinflammation is associated. Epileptogenesis is indeed associated with neuroinflammation as well, however recent studies show that microglia is also able to perform an anti-epileptogenic and neuroprotective role. These studies have shown that microglia surveillance is important for suppressing seizure activity and that microglia-depleted mice are more susceptible to acute and chronic seizures.