CDK8 and Alzheimer disease: Interestingly, although aberrant expression of mitotic regulators, such as cyclin c and binding partner Cdk8 have been observed in the astrocytes of AD brains (Ueberham et al., 2003), in vitro studies demonstrate highly variable and contrasting effects of Aβ on astrocytes (Agostinho et al., 2010), including induction of apoptosis (Brera et al., 2000; Hou et al., 2011; Saha and Biswas, 2015) and oxidative stress (Brera et al., 2000), as well as changes in morphology (Salinero et al., 1997) and proliferation (Hernandez-Guillamon et al., 2009).