Review Article Microglial Ion Channels as Potential Targets for Neuroprotection in Parkinson’s Disease

Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder that is estimated to affect at least 1million individuals in the USA and over 10million worldwide. It is thought that the loss of neurons and development of inclusion bodies occur gradually over decades until they progress to the point where ∼60 % of the dopamine neurons are lost and patients present withmotor dysfunction. At present, it is not clear what causes this progression, and there are no current therapies that have been successful in preventing PD progression. Although there aremany hypotheses regarding themechanism of PD progression, neuroinflammationmay be amajor contributor to PD pathogenesis. Indeed, activated microglia and subsequent neuroinflammation have been consistently associated with the pathogenesis of PD.Thus, interference with this process could provide a means of neuroprotection in PD.This review will discuss the potential of targeting microglia to reduce neuroinflammation in PD. Further, we discuss the potential of microglial ion channels to serve as novel targets for neuroprotection in PD. 1