The CD163+ anti-inflammatory targeted modification of monocytes in the 6-OHDA rat model using dexamethasone (Tentillier et al. 2016) or the deletion of the CCR2 (thus avoiding macrophage recruitment) in the viral-vector-α-syn PD mouse model (Harms et al. 2018) both resulted in dopaminergic neuronal protection in the SN. Here, CCR2 is linked to Parkinson disease.