Editorial: Common Pathways Linking Neurodegenerative Diseases—The Role of Inflammation

[...]spreading inflammation has been observed in Alzheimer's disease. Since evidence supports the inflammatory crosstalk between the periphery and the central nervous system via the blood-brain barrier (BBB), Ni and Wu show that the “dampening inflammation,” particularly through the inhibition of cathepsin, appears to be a novel therapeutic approach delaying the onset of and enacting early intervention for Alzheimer's disease. While the acute inflammatory response aggravates an ischemic injury, the recovery and tissue repair depend on later inflammatory processes. [...]according to the authors, effective therapy should selectively inhibit the deleterious constituents of the inflammatory process during cerebral ischemia and simultaneously enhance the beneficial aspects of the inflammatory response. Using this model, Sarkar et al. have demonstrated that Azadirachta indica (Neem) bark extract suppresses MHV-induced neuroinflammation and neuropathogenesis by inhibiting cell-to-cell fusion and viral replication. [...]the authors suggested antiviral activity of Neem extract against other Spike expressing human coronaviruses like SARS-CoV-2. The newly released study by Kim et al. demonstrates that early microglial matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) activation contributes to CNV. [...]the authors suggest modulation of microglial MMP expression as a novel putative therapeutic target for CNV.