ArticleNature neuroscience2026
TGFβ signaling mediates microglial resilience to spatiotemporally restricted myelin degeneration.
Article in Nature neuroscience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cytokine circuits in CNS homeostasis and disease.Nature immunology · 2026Review
- Microglia and neuroinflammation: function, heterogeneity, and crosstalk.Cellular & molecular immunology · 2026Review
- Transcriptional Heterogeneity of Oligodendrocytes: Molecular Basis of Diversity Across Development, Brain Regions, and Neurological Diseases.Neurology international · 2026Review
- Gpnmb defines a phagocytic state of microglia linked to cell death in prion disease mouse model.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Microglial state transitions are constrained by developmental and metabolic checkpoints.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2026Review
- Spatial pharmacology of anti-cancer immunomodulators: a comprehensive review.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
23 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Microglia survey and regulate central nervous system myelination during embryonic development and adult homeostasis. However, whether microglia-myelin interactions are spatiotemporally regulated remains unexplored. Here, by examining spinal cord white matter tracts in mice, we determined that myelin degeneration was particularly prominent in the dorsal column (DC) during normal aging. This was accompanied by molecular and functional changes in DC microglia as well as an upregulation of transforming growth factor beta (TGF)β signaling. Disrupting TGFβ signaling in microglia led to unrestrained microglial responses and myelin loss in the DC, accompanied by neurological deficits exacerbated with aging. Single-nucleus RNA-sequencing analyses revealed the emergence of a TGFβ signaling-sensitive microglial subset and a disease-associated oligodendrocyte subset, both of which were spatially restricted to the DC. We further discovered that microglia rely on a TGFβ autocrine mechanism to prevent damage of myelin in the DC. These findings demonstrate that TGFβ signaling is crucial for maintaining microglial resilience to myelin degeneration in the DC during aging. This highlights a previously unresolved checkpoint mechanism of TGFβ signaling with regional specificity and spatially restricted microglia-oligodendrocyte interactions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.