Polyamines in the Central Nervous System
In their interesting work
Soulet and Rivest (Polyamines play a critical role in the control of the
innate immune response in the mouse central nervous system. Journal of Cell
Biology 162, 257-268, 2003) found a link between polyamines
and the innate immune response in the nervous system. The neuronal and glial
level of ornithine-decarboxylase, the rate-limiting enzyme for the
synthesis of polyamines, increased as mice were challenged with systemic
lipopolysaccharide. In the experiments the production of pro-inflammatory
cytokines (PCK) was increased too. The increasing of PCK was abolished by
inhibiting polyamine synthesis, which prevented neuronal death in a mouse model
of innate immune reactivity in the brain.
It seems evident that
polyamines play a critical role in the control of the innate immune response in
the mouse central nervous system.