Psychoneuroimmunology

BACKGROUND: Although post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression screening are recommended for traumatic injury patients, routine screening is still uncommon. Salivary inflammatory biomarkers have biological plausibility and potential feasibility and acceptability for screening. This study tested prospective associations between several salivary inflammatory biomarkers (proinflammatory cytokines interleukin-1β, interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α; and C-reactive protein), collected during hospitalization and PTSD and depressive symptoms at 5-month follow-up...

BACKGROUND & PURPOSE: Adolescent housing insecurity is a dynamic form of social adversity that impacts child health outcomes worldwide. However, the means by which adolescent housing insecurity may become biologically embedded to influence health outcomes over the life course remain unclear. Therefore, we aimed to utilize life course perspectives and advanced causal inference methods to evaluate the potential for inflammation to contribute to the biological embedding of adolescent housing insecurity...

Understanding the psychiatric symptoms of Alzheimer s disease (AD) is crucial for advancing precision medicine and therapeutic strategies. The relationship between AD behavioral symptoms and asymmetry in spatial tau PET patterns is not well-known. Braak tau progression implicates the temporal lobes early. However, the clinical and pathological implications of temporal tau laterality remain unexplored. This cross-sectional study investigated the correlation between temporal tau PET asymmetry and behavior assessed using the neuropsychiatric inventory and composite scores for memory, executive function, and language, using data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) dataset...

Metabolites and compounds derived from gut-associated bacteria can modulate numerous physiological processes in the host, including immunity and behavior. Using a model of oral bacterial infection, we previously demonstrated that gut-derived peptidoglycan (PGN), an essential constituent of the bacterial cell envelope, influences female fruit fly egg-laying behavior by activating the NF-κB cascade in a subset of brain neurons. These findings underscore PGN as a potential mediator of communication between gut bacteria and the brain in Drosophila, prompting further investigation into its impact on all brain cells...

BACKGROUND: The study examined how plasma proteome indicators may explain the link between poor cardiovascular health (CVH) and dementia risk. METHODS: The present study involved 28,974 UK Biobank participants aged 50-74y (2006-2010) at baseline (2006-2010) who were followed-up for ≤ 15 y for incidence of dementia. CVH was calculated using Life's Essential 8 (LE8) total scores. The scores were standardized and reverse coded to reflect poor CVH (LE8z_rev)...

Chronic pain is a heavily debilitating condition and a huge socio-economic burden, with no efficient treatment. Over the past decade, the gut microbiota has emerged as an important regulator of nervous system's health and disease states. Yet, its contribution to the pathogenesis of chronic somatic pain remains poorly documented. Here, we report that male but not female mice lacking Myosin1a (KO) raised under single genotype housing conditions (KO-SGH) are predisposed to develop chronic pain in response to a peripheral tissue injury...

INTRODUCTION: Despite improved management of traumatic brain injury (TBI), it still leads to lifelong sequelae and disability, particularly in children. Chronic neuroinflammation (the so-called tertiary phase), in particular, microglia/macrophage and astrocyte reactivity, is among the main mechanisms suspected of playing a role in the generation of lesions associated with TBI. The role of acute neuroinflammation is now well understood, but its persistent effect and impact on the brain, particularly during development, are not...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

The impact of psychological stress on physiological systems has been a focus of extensive research, particularly in understanding its diverse effects on immune system activity and disease risk. This meta-analysis explores the dynamic effect of acute stress on salivary immunoglobulin-A (S-IgA) levels, a key biomarker for secretory immunity within the oral environment. Analyzing data from 34 samples comprising 87 effect sizes and a total of 1,025 subjects, a multi-level approach is employed to account for the temporal variability in measuring the stress response...

Exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) confers a higher risk of developing depression in adulthood, yet the mediation of inflammation remains under debate. To test this model, we conducted a systematic review and two-stage structural equation modelling meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between ACEs before age 18, inflammatory markers and depression severity in adulthood. Scopus, Pubmed, Medline, PsycInfo, and CINAHL were searched up to 2 October 2023. Twenty-two studies reporting data on C-reactive protein (CRP, n = 12,935), interleukin-6 (IL-6, n = 4108), tumour necrosis factor-α (TNF-α, n = 2256) and composite measures of inflammation (n = 1674) were included...

There are inter-individual differences in susceptibility to the influence of early life experiences for which the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are poorly understood. Microglia play a role in environmental surveillance and may influence individual susceptibility to environmental factors. As an index of neurodevelopment, we estimated individual slopes of mean white matter fractional anisotropy (WM-FA) across three time-points (age 4.5, 6.0, and 7.5 years) for 351 participants. Individual variation in microglia reactivity was derived from an expression-based polygenic score(ePGS) comprised of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) functionally related to the expression of microglia-enriched genes...

Newborns exposed to birth asphyxia transiently experience deficient blood flow and a lack of oxygen, potentially inducing hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy and subsequent neurological damage. Immunomodulatory components in plasma may dampen these responses. Using caesarean-delivered pigs as a model, we hypothesized that dietary plasma supplementation improves brain outcomes in pigs exposed to birth asphyxia. Mild birth asphyxia was induced by temporary occlusion of the umbilical cord prior to caesarean delivery...

The co-occurrence and familial clustering of neurodevelopmental disorders and immune disorders suggest shared genetic risk factors. Based on genome-wide association summary statistics from five neurodevelopmental disorders and four immune disorders, we conducted genome-wide, local genetic correlation and polygenic overlap analysis. We further performed a cross-trait GWAS meta-analysis. Pleotropic loci shared between the two categories of diseases were mapped to candidate genes using multiple algorithms and approaches...

There is urgent need for novel antidepressant treatments that confer therapeutic benefits via engagement with identified mechanistic targets. The objective of the study was to determine whether activation of the classical anti-inflammatory interleukin-6 signaling pathways is associated with the antidepressant effects of whole-body hyperthermia. A 6-week, randomized, double-blind study compared whole-body hyperthermia with a sham condition in a university-based medical center. Medically healthy participants aged 18-65 years who met criteria for major depressive disorder, were free of psychotropic medication use, and had a baseline 17-item Hamilton Depression Rating Scale score ≥ 16 were randomized with 1-to-1 allocation in blocks of 6 to receive whole-body hyperthermia or sham...

The high prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) frequently imposes severe constraints on psychosocial functioning and detrimentally impacts overall well-being. Despite the growing interest in the hypothesis of mitochondrial dysfunction, the precise mechanistic underpinnings and therapeutic strategies remain unclear and require further investigation. In this study, an MDD model was established in mice using lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Our research findings demonstrated that LPS exposure induced depressive-like behaviors and disrupted mitophagy by diminishing the mitochondrial levels of PINK1/Parkin in the brains of mice...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Social withdrawal is a well-established part of sickness behavior, but in some contexts sick animals might gain from keeping close instead of keeping away. For instance, sick individuals are more willing to be near known individuals who can provide care and safety (close others) compared to when healthy. Yet, interactions with some strangers might also be beneficial (i.e., healthcare professionals), but it is not known how sickness interplay with social behavior towards such individuals. Here, we assessed if sickness affects perception of caregivers and developed a new task, the Caregiver Perception Task (CgPT)...

BACKGROUND: The vagus nerve plays an important role in neuroimmune interactions and in the regulation of inflammation. A major source of efferent vagus nerve fibers that contribute to the regulation of inflammation is the brainstem dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMN) as recently shown using optogenetics. In contrast to optogenetics, electrical neuromodulation has broad therapeutic implications. However, the anti-inflammatory effectiveness of electrical stimulation of the DMN (eDMNS) and the possible heart rate (HR) alterations associated with this approach have not been investigated...

Rac1 is a key regulator of the cytoskeleton and neuronal plasticity, and is known to play a critical role in psychological and cognitive brain disorders. To elucidate the engram specific Rac1 signaling in fear memory, a doxycycline (Dox)-dependent robust activity marking (RAM) system was used to label dorsal dentate gyrus (DG) engram cells in mice during contextual fear conditioning. Rac1 mRNA and protein levels in DG engram cells was peaked at 24 h (day 1) after fear conditioning and were more abundant in the fear engram cells than in the non-engram cells...

There is a two-fold higher incidence of depression in females compared to men with recent studies suggesting a role for microglia in conferring this sex-dependent depression risk. In this study we investigated the nature of this relation. Using GWAS enrichment, gene-set enrichment analysis and Mendelian randomization, we found minimal evidence for a direct relation between genes functionally related to microglia and sex-dependent genetic risk for depression. We then used expression quantitative trait loci and single nucleus RNA-sequencing resources to generate polygenic scores (PGS) representative of individual variation in microglial function in the adult (UK Biobank; N = 54753-72682) and fetal (ALSPAC; N = 1452) periods...