Reactive astrocytosis describes the transcriptional, morphological, and functional changes astrocytes undergo in response to injury, inflammation, or neurodegeneration.[1][2] These changes can be protective, maladaptive, or mixed depending on context.
Reactive astrocytosis is a common endpoint in many disease and cell-type pages because it links glial activation to synaptic remodeling, inflammatory signaling, and trophic support changes.[1:1] It is closely related to tripartite-synapse biology and astrocytes-neurodegeneration.
Astrocytes in neurodegenerative disease. Nature Reviews Neurology (2019). ↩︎ ↩︎
Neurotoxic reactive astrocytes are induced by activated microglia. Nature (2017). ↩︎