Spatial Arrangement of Microglia in the Mouse Hippocampus: A Stereological Study in Comparison

Iba1; S100b; point pattern analysis; optical disector Microglia are classically considered to be immune cells in the brain, but have now been proven to be involved in neu-ronal activity as well. Here we stereologically analyzed the spatial arrangement of microglia in the mouse hippocam-pus. First, we estimated the numerical densities (NDs) of microglia identified by ionized calcium-binding adaptor mol-ecule 1 (Iba1). Despite that microglia appeared to be evenly distributed throughout the hippocampal area, the NDs demonstrated significant dorsoventral, interregional, and interlaminar differences. Briefly, the NDs in the ventral hippocampus were significantly lower in the CA3 region than in the CA1 region and dentate gyrus, although no interregional differences were detectable in the dorsal hip-pocampus. Both in the CA1 and CA3 regions, the NDs were significantly higher in the stratum lacunosum-moleculare than in the remaining layers. Next, we investigated the spatial patterns of distribution of Iba1-labeled microglia and S100b-labeled astrocytes. So far as we examined, the somato–somatic contacts were not seen among microglia or among astrocytes, whereas the close apposition between microglia and astrocytes were occasionally detected. The 3D point process analysis showed that the spatial distribu-tion of microglia was significantly repulsive. Because the statistical territory of single microglia was larger than that estimated from process tracing, they are not likely to touch each other with their processes. Astrocytes were dis-tributed slightly repulsively with overlapping areas. The 3D point process analysis also revealed a significant spatial attraction between microglia and astrocytes. The present findings provide a novel anatomical basis for glial re-search. VC 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc