Fig. 1

Massive infiltration of microglia in hippocampal plaques in cognitively impaired MS patients. (a) Representative immunohistochemical staining for myelin (MBP, in red) and microglia cells (Iba1, in white) and staining for cell nuclei (DAPI, blue) of postmortem hippocampal slices of non-demented donors (NDC) and multiple sclerosis donors diagnosed with preserved (MSCP) and impaired cognition (MSCI). White dash lines indicate the areas of demyelination. Scale bars: 50 μm. Graph bars stand for the quantification of (b) lesion areas in µm², the manual counting of (c) Iba1⁺ cells normalized to the lesion area and (d) the minimum and maximum number of Iba1⁺ cells able to infiltrate lesion areas (N = 8 for NDC, MSCP and MSCI). Microglia morphometric analysis, as (e) cell membrane sphericity, (f) surface area and (g) volume, were automatically calculated by AIVIA software. Each data point represents a different Iba1⁺ cell detected (N = 137 for NDC, N = 278 for MSCP, and N = 435 for MSCI). *p < 0.05 vs. NDC; # p < 0.05, and ##p < 0.01 vs. MSCP