Tag: immune system

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

pastthestorm:

duskenpath:

thecraftychemist:

neuromorphogenesis:

Missing link found between brain, immune system — with major disease implications

In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have determined that the brain is directly connected to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.

That such vessels could have escaped detection when the lymphatic system has been so thoroughly mapped throughout the body is surprising on its own, but the true significance of the discovery lies in the effects it could have on the study and treatment of neurological diseases ranging from autism to Alzheimer’s disease to multiple sclerosis.

“Instead of asking, ‘How do we study the immune response of the brain?,’ ‘Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?,’ now we can approach this mechanistically – because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels,” said Jonathan Kipnis, a professor in U.Va.’s Department of Neuroscience and director of U.Va.’s Center for Brain Immunology and Glia. “It changes entirely the way we perceive the neuro-immune interaction. We always perceived it before as something esoteric that can’t be studied. But now we can ask mechanistic questions.“

He added, “We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it, these vessels may play a major role. [It’s] hard to imagine that these vessels would not be involved in a [neurological] disease with an immune component.”

Kevin Lee, who chairs the Department of Neuroscience, described his reaction to the discovery by Kipnis’ lab: “The first time these guys showed me the basic result, I just said one sentence: ‘They’ll have to change the textbooks.’ There has never been a lymphatic system for the central nervous system, and it was very clear from that first singular observation – and they’ve done many studies since then to bolster the finding – that it will fundamentally change the way people look at the central nervous system’s relationship with the immune system.”

Even Kipnis was skeptical initially. “I really did not believe there are structures in the body that we are not aware of. I thought the body was mapped,” he said. “I thought that these discoveries ended somewhere around the middle of the last century. But apparently they have not.”

The discovery was made possible by the work of Antoine Louveau, a postdoctoral fellow in Kipnis’ lab. The vessels were detected after Louveau developed a method to mount a mouse’s meninges – the membranes covering the brain – on a single slide so that they could be examined as a whole. “It was fairly easy, actually,” he said. “There was one trick: We fixed the meninges within the skullcap, so that the tissue is secured in its physiological condition, and then we dissected it. If we had done it the other way around, it wouldn’t have worked.”

After noticing vessel-like patterns in the distribution of immune cells on his slides, he tested for lymphatic vessels and there they were. The impossible existed.

The soft-spoken Louveau recalled the moment: “I called Jony [Kipnis] to the microscope and I said, ‘I think we have something.’”

As to how the brain’s lymphatic vessels managed to escape notice all this time, Kipnis described them as “very well hidden” and noted that they follow a major blood vessel down into the sinuses, an area difficult to image. “It’s so close to the blood vessel, you just miss it,” he said. “If you don’t know what you’re after, you just miss it.

“Live imaging of these vessels was crucial to demonstrate their function, and it would not be possible without collaboration with Tajie Harris,” Kipnis noted. Harris is an assistant professor of neuroscience and a member of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia. Kipnis also saluted the “phenomenal” surgical skills of Igor Smirnov, a research associate in the Kipnis lab whose work was critical to the imaging success of the study.

The unexpected presence of the lymphatic vessels raises a tremendous number of questions that now need answers, both about the workings of the brain and the diseases that plague it.

For example, take Alzheimer’s disease. “In Alzheimer’s, there are accumulations of big protein chunks in the brain,” Kipnis said. “We think they may be accumulating in the brain because they’re not being efficiently removed by these vessels.” He noted that the vessels look different with age, so the role they play in aging is another avenue to explore.

And there’s an enormous array of other neurological diseases, from autism to multiple sclerosis, that must be reconsidered in light of the presence of something science insisted did not exist.

Image: 

The lymphatic system map: old (left) and new.

Source

This is really big. This is really big news in medicine and I suspect in mental health as well. Consider the recent discoveries around the association between mental health and the immune system;

There are still so many things we are finding out about the nature of disease and the human body – especially the brain.

Interestingly this agrees with what a lot of non western medical modalities have said for centuries, big stuff

guys this is real! source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150615094258.htm

~ Sephira ~ Leave a comment

dianesdreams:

neurosciencestuff:

Mind and body: Scientists identify immune system link to mental illness

Children with high everyday levels of a protein released into the blood in response to infection are at greater risk of developing depression and psychosis in adulthood, according to new research which suggests a role for the immune system in mental illness.

The study, published today in JAMA Psychiatry, indicates that mental illness and chronic physical illness such as coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes may share common biological mechanisms.

When we are exposed to an infection, for example influenza or a stomach bug, our immune system fights back to control and remove the infection. During this process, immune cells flood the blood stream with proteins such as interleukin-6 (IL-6), a tell-tale marker of infection. However, even when we are healthy, our bodies carry trace levels of these proteins – known as ‘inflammatory markers’ – which rise exponentially in response to infection.

Now, researchers have carried out the first ever longitudinal study – a study that follows the same cohort of people over a long period of time – to examine the link between these markers in childhood and subsequent mental illness.

A team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge studied a sample of 4,500 individuals from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children – also known as Children of the 90s – taking blood samples at age 9 and following up at age 18 to see if they had experienced episodes of depression or psychosis. The team divided the individuals into three groups, depending on whether their everyday levels of IL-6 were low, medium or high. They found that those children in the ‘high’ group were nearly two times more likely to have experienced depression or psychosis than those in the ‘low’ group.

Dr Golam Khandaker from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, who led the study, says: “Our immune system acts like a thermostat, turned down low most of the time, but cranked up when we have an infection. In some people, the thermostat is always set slightly higher, behaving as if they have a persistent low level infection – these people appear to be at a higher risk of developing depression and psychosis. It’s too early to say whether this association is causal, and we are carrying out additional studies to examine this association further.”

The research indicates that chronic physical illness such as coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes may share a common mechanism with mental illness. People with depression and schizophrenia are known to have a much higher risk of developing heart disease and diabetes, and elevated levels of IL-6 have previously been shown to increase the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Professor Peter Jones, Head of the Department of Psychiatry and senior author of the study, says: “Inflammation may be a common mechanism that influences both our physical and mental health. It is possible that early life adversity and stress lead to persistent increase in levels of IL-6 and other inflammatory markers in our body, which, in turn, increase the risk of a number of chronic physical and mental illness.”

Indeed, low birth weight, a marker of impaired foetal development, is associated with increased everyday levels of inflammatory markers as well as greater risks of heart disease, diabetes, depression and schizophrenia in adults.

This potential common mechanism could help explain why physical exercise and diet, classic ways of reducing risk of heart disease, for example, are also thought to improve mood and help depression. The group is now planning additional studies to confirm whether inflammation is a common link between chronic physical and mental illness.

The research also hints at interesting ways of potentially treating illnesses such as depression: anti-inflammatory drugs. Treatment with anti-inflammatory agents leads to levels of inflammatory markers falling to normal. Previous research has suggested that anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin used in conjunction with antipsychotic treatments may be more effective than just the antipsychotics themselves. A multicentre trial is currently underway, into whether the antibiotic minocycline, used for the treatment of acne, can be used to treat lack of enjoyment, social withdrawal, apathy and other so called negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Minocycline is able to penetrate the ‘blood-brain barrier’, a highly selective permeability barrier which protects the central nervous system from potentially harmful substances circulating in our blood.

The ‘blood-brain barrier’ is also at the centre of a potential puzzle raised by research such as today’s research: how can the immune system have an effect in the brain when many inflammatory markers and antibodies cannot penetrate this barrier? Studies in mice suggest that the answer may lie in the vagus nerve, which connects the brain to the abdomen. When activated by inflammatory markers in the gut, it sends a signal to the brain, where immune cells produce proteins such as IL-6, leading to increased metabolism (and hence decreased levels) of the ‘happiness hormone’ serotonin in the brain. Similarly, the signals trigger an increase in toxic chemicals such as nitric oxide, quinolonic acid, and kynurenic acid, which are bad for the functioning of nerve cells.

makes me wonder…