FLICKR, ZEISS MICROSCOPYInflammation in the body may influence the “memory” of immune cells in the brains of mice, researchers report today (April 11) in Nature. If confirmed in humans, the finding could give clues to the development of certain neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.
“Epidemiological studies have shown that infectious diseases and inflammation suffered during a lifetime can affect the severity of Alzheimer’s disease much later in life,” study coauthor Jonas Neher of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Tübingen says in a statement. “We therefore asked ourselves whether an immunological memory in these long-lived microglia could be communicating this risk.”
In the study, Neher and his colleagues studied the response of microglia—long-lived immune cells found only in the brain—to repeated bodily infections. The team injected mice that model Alzheimer’s disease with the bacterial component lipopolysaccharide to induce inflammation. The inflammatory response triggered by the first shot trained microglia to be on guard for subsequent infections. After repeated injections, however, the immune cells barely responded—they’d developed tolerance to ...
