Understanding Astrocyte Reactivity in Perinatal White Matter Injury and Its Role in Disease Pathophysiology

Background/Purpose: Hypoxic and inflammatory insults to the fetal brain between the 23rd and 32nd week of human gestation lead to long-term myelination failure. Termed perinatal white matter injury (WMI), these myelination defects constitute the major form of long-term neurologic morbidity in infants born preterm. While astrocyte reactivity is a hallmark of WMI, the molecular identity of reactive astrocytes in WMI and their role in WMI pathophysiology have remained unclear. Building on our work demonstrating the formation of neuroinflammatory reactive astrocytes (NrAs) in mouse and human tissue affected by WMI, we report the results of experiments aimed at characterizing astrocyte reactivity in WMI at the single-cell level.