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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
Jie  LuJie Lu1Tie-Jun  XianTie-Jun Xian1Cheng-Jun  LiCheng-Jun Li2Yang  WangYang Wang2*
  • 1Shenyang First People's Hospital, Shenyang, China
  • 2Shenyang Tenth People's Hospital, Shenyang, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

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

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