What macrophage does what?

Yamasaki R, Lu H, Butovsky O, Ohno N, Rietsch AM, Cialic R, Wu PM, Doykan CE, Lin J, Cotleur AC, Kidd G, Zorlu MM, Sun N, Hu W, Liu L, Lee JC, Taylor SE, Uehlein L, Dixon D, Gu J, Floruta CM, Zhu M, Charo IF, Weiner HL, Ransohoff RM. Differential roles of microglia and monocytes in the inflamed central nervous system. J Exp Med. 2014 Jul. pii: jem.20132477. [Epub ahead of print]

In the human disorder multiple sclerosis (MS) and in the model experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), macrophages predominate in demyelinated areas and their numbers correlate to tissue damage. Macrophages may be derived from infiltrating monocytes or resident microglia, yet are indistinguishable by light microscopy and surface phenotype. It is axiomatic that T cell-mediated macrophage activation is critical for inflammatory demyelination in EAE, yet the precise details by which tissue injury takes place remain poorly understood. In the present study, we addressed the cellular basis of autoimmune demyelination by discriminating microglial versus monocyte origins of effector macrophages. We show that monocyte-derived macrophages associate with nodes of Ranvier and initiate demyelination, whereas microglia appear to clear debris. Gene expression profiles confirm that monocyte-derived macrophages are highly phagocytic and inflammatory, whereas those arising from microglia demonstrate an unexpected signature of globally suppressed cellular metabolism at disease onset. Distinguishing tissue-resident macrophages from infiltrating monocytes will point toward new strategies to treat disease and promote repair in diverse inflammatory pathologies in varied organs.
In this study they suggest that blood-derived macrophages that enter the CNS are the cells causing the damage whereas the brain derived macrophages called microglia do the mopping up and clear the debris after this destruction and may promote the repair process.
Targeting the macrophage arm of the immune response can be just as effective as targeting T cell responses, the question is what would the side-effect profile be like?

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