The brain can direct the immune system to an unexpected degree, capable of detecting, ramping up and tamping down inflammation, shows a new study in mice.
The brain can direct the immune system to an unexpected degree, capable of detecting, ramping up and tamping down inflammation, shows a new study in mice from researchers at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute.
"This new discovery could provide an exciting therapeutic venue to control inflammation and immunity," said Charles S. Zuker, PhD, the study's senior author, a principal investigator at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. The scientists looked for connections the brain might have with inflammation and innate immunity, the defense system shared by all animals and the most ancient component of the immune system. Whereas the adaptive immune system remembers previous encounters with intruders to help it resist them if they invade again, the innate immune system attacks anything with common traits of germs. The relative simplicity of innate immunity lets it respond to new insults more quickly than adaptive immunity.
The scientists showed that chemically suppressing the cNST resulted in an out-of-control inflammatory response to the immune insult: levels of pro-inflammatory molecules released by the immune system were more than three times higher than usual, and levels of anti-inflammatory immune compounds were roughly three times lower than normal.
"A lot of psychosomatic effects could actually be linked to brain circuits telling your body something," Dr. Jin noted. Harnessing the activity of this circuit may make a difference across a broad range of conditions affecting the immune system, and help treat dysregulated inflammatory states in people suffering from immune diseases and disorders, Drs. Jin and Li said.Chronic stress affects the immune system and the brain. Researchers now show that a particular enzyme found in cells of the immune system enters the brain under stress. In mice, it causes them to ...
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