serum proteins, as well as blood borne immune cells and molecules, from metabolic disorders in other tissues (Figure 1A); in response to such non-cell autonomous stimuli, astrocytes can produce a multitude of molecular signals that can influence many different neural and non-neural cell types including cells involved in innate immune responses (Figure 1B) (reviewed in detail elsewhere [1, 8, 9, 20–23, 30–32]).
