is diagnosed with FASD, which occurs when a child is exposed to alcohol in the womb. One out of every 100 babies born in the U.S. However, given the heterogeneity and complexity of microglial function, we are also exploring how different populations of microglia in different parts of the brain respond to alcohol.” “We were not able to detect a difference in function leading us to believe that the defect may exist in other cell types.

“We looked for more subtle changes in microglia function this time,” said Ania Majewska, PhD, professor of neuroscience at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, and lead author on the study published in Developmental Neurobiology. It has long been thought that cells in the brain’s immune system called microglia are responsible for the neurological damage that occurs when this type of exposure happens. Researchers at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester continue to find evidence that the brain’s immune system may not be the culprit behind fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD). The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), and the University of Rochester Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (UR-IDDRC). Other authors include the senior author Ania Majewska, PhD, Linh Le, Erik Vonkaenel, and Matthew McCall, PhD, of the University of Rochester Medical Center, and James Douglas and Paul Drew, PhD, of the University of Arkansas Medical Center. “We believe examining other cell types and their interactions may be an important direction for future fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) studies to take.” “It appears that developmental ethanol exposure has little effect on microglia later in life,” said MaKenna Cealie, a Neuroscience graduate student in the lab and first author of the paper.

They found mice exposed to ethanol during development had no differences in microglia movement or structure and only subtle changes in the interaction between microglia and Purkinje neurons. Researchers in the Majewska Lab at the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Rochester investigated the interaction between microglia and Purkinje neurons-the neurons responsible for sending information from the cerebellum. A new study out in Frontiers in Neuroscience found early alcohol exposure does not change the connection between the brain's immune system and neurons that send information related to functions like balance and memory.

Dendrite function