Age-dependent astrocyte proliferation/microglial activation and pathological neuroinflammatory changes have been observed in the CNS of different tauopathy models in the early stage of disease without neuronal loss, showing activated CD68-positive microglia around neurons containing hyperphosphorylated tau NFTs (Maphis et al., 2015; Laurent et al., 2017; Van Zeller et al., 2021). The gene discussed is MAPT; the disease is tauopathy.