MINI REVIEW article
Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Neuroinflammation and Neuropathy
Volume 17 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2025.1671552
This article is part of the Research TopicSex-dependent modulation of neuroinflammation in the aging brainView all articles
The Estrogen-Brain Interface in Neuroinflammation: A Multidimensional Mechanistic Insight
Provisionally accepted- 1Shenyang First People's Hospital, Shenyang, China
- 2Shenyang Tenth People's Hospital, Shenyang, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Neuroinflammation plays a dual role in the central nervous system, offering protection in acute phases but contributing to chronic damage in neurodegenerative diseases. Estrogen, traditionally recognized for its reproductive functions, exerts extensive neuroprotective effects by modulating neuroinflammatory processes across multiple levels. This review explores the actions of estrogen through its receptors in astrocytes, microglia, and neurons, emphasizing its regulation of signaling pathways such as PI3K/Akt, NF-κB, and WNT/β-catenin. Estrogen also enhances mitochondrial function, promotes DNA repair, and interacts with the gut microbiota to influence systemic inflammation. Furthermore, sex-specific responses to 17α-estradiol highlight the importance of hormonal context. Together, these findings underscore estrogen's potential as a multifaceted modulator of neuroinflammation and provide insight for precision therapeutic strategies.
Keywords: estrogen, Neuroinflammation, estrogen receptors, Mitochondrial function, DNA Repair, gut-brain axis
Received: 23 Jul 2025; Accepted: 06 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lu, Xian, Li and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yang Wang, Shenyang Tenth People's Hospital, Shenyang, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.