Fig. 4

Altered microglial cell body ultrastructure observed in dorsomedial striatum during HD pathology. Electron micrograph examples of microglial cell bodies from 3-week-old WT (A), 3-week-old R6/2 (B), 10-week-old WT (C), and 10-week-old R6/2 (D) mice displaying IBA1+ immunoreactivity. Scale bar = 1 μm. The percentage of microglial cell bodies containing phagosomes (E) and the number of phagosomes per microglial cell body (F) were determined. The number of partially digested inclusions per cell body (G), as well as percentage of cells containing dilated endoplasmic reticulum (H), were measured. bv, blood vessel; d, dendrite; ex, extracellular digestion; np, neuronal perikaryon; s, dendritic spine; t, axon terminal. Black arrows point to excitatory synaptic clefts. Phagosomes are pseudocolored in purple. n = 7–11 cell bodies per animal for all conditions, and data was collected from N = 3–4 animals per condition. Asterisk denotes the difference from WT, red number sign denotes the difference between ages in R6/2 mice; *^,#p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001