While confirming increased expression of genes involved in antigen presentation (HLA-DRA), phagocytosis (CD68, MSR1) and immunoregulation (IL10) in the NAWM, this study differs from previous studies showing more limited or no changes in the expression of inflammation- and microglia-related genes in NAWM samples isolated from the brain of acute (Zrzavy et al., 2017), relapsing-remitting (Hendrickx et al., 2017) and progressive (Koning et al., 2007; Zeis et al., 2008; Elkjaer et al., 2019) MS cases, and in microglia isolated from the NAWM of progressive MS cases (van der Poel et al., 2019). This evidence concerns the gene CD68 and myeloid sarcoma.