Current methods and approaches to studying astrocytes: a forum position paper.

Astrocytes are becoming increasingly recognized as targets for neurotoxic agents. For neurotoxicologists, as for other neuroscientists, an important concern is how to study astrocytes. In this paper, it is argued that studies of primary astrocyte cultures, while they are convenient as experimental systems and have been of great value to a resurgence of interest in these cell types over the past quarter century, now need to be supplemented to a large degree by studies on preparations where the properties of astrocytes are less likely to deviate from their properties in situ. Different and alternative systems to primary astrocyte cultures are described and critically evaluated in this article.