Since it was demonstrated that during the progression of cerebral ischemia microglia phenotype changes from anti- to pro-inflammatory (Fumagalli et al., 2015; Ma et al., 2017) and microglia express CX3CR1, we investigated whether the neuroprotective effect of CX3CL1 in ischemia is due to its ability to change the phenotype of microglia. This evidence concerns the gene CX3CL1 and brain ischemia.