Fig. 3

Microglia is present in high synaptic hippocampal region of cognitively impaired MS patients. (a) Representative immunohistochemical staining of the CA1-CA3 regions 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 region of interest (ROI) detected by the higher density of nuclei staining (in blue, DAPI). Scale bars: 50 μm. Graph bars stand for the quantification of (b) the manual counting of Iba1⁺ cells normalized to the CA1-CA3 regions of postmortem hippocampal area (N = 8 for NDC, MSCP and MSCI). Microglia morphometric analysis, as (c) cell membrane surface area and (d) volume, were automatically calculated by AIVIA software. Each data point represents a different Iba1⁺ cell detected (N = 161 for NDC, N = 358 for MSCP, and N = 209 for MSCI). *p < 0.05 vs. NDC; #p < 0.05 vs. MSCP