Cell: intestinal infection eventually leads to chronic disease, which is closely related to intestinal neurons and macrophages!

Author: in a healthy intestine, the immune system resists infection by means of inflammation, but too much inflammation can cause lasting damage In other words, inflammation tends to do good and bad Some scientists believe that infection may damage the intestinal nervous system, leading to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) Researchers at Rockefeller University revealed the cause of gut neuron death and the protective mechanism of the immune system through experiments The research results were published in cell Doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.12.002 intestinal associated neurons (eans) are closely related to immune cells, monitoring and regulating intestinal homeostasis at all times In order to understand the effect of infection on the nervous system and analyze the neurons in the gut, the researchers gave the mice Salmonella SPIB, which can cause food poisoning By constructing the intestinal infection model of mice, the long-term gastrointestinal symptoms such as decreased intestinal motility and decreased excited iean were observed At the same time, it was found that these cells expressed two genes nlrp 6 and caspase 11, which promote specific inflammatory response, in turn, they can promote programmed cell death When the researchers knocked out these genes in mouse neurons, they found a decrease in the number of neurons Neurons (green) appear near the inflammatory molecule nlrp 6 (pink) along the edge of the small intestine Previous studies showed that intestinal muscle macrophages (MMS) can express anti-inflammatory genes and cooperate with neurons to make food move through the digestive tract This study further revealed that macrophages have some type of receptor molecules, which receive the stress signals released by another group of neurons after infection Once activated, this receptor will induce macrophages to produce polyamine molecules, which will interfere with the cell death process To sum up, this study found that (1) intestinal infection can cause neuron reduction and long-term gastrointestinal symptoms, the former is dependent on nlrp 6 and caspase 11 genes, (2) MMS can react rapidly to intestinal pathogens, (3) neuron death is limited by mm β 2-adrenergic-arginase-1-polyamine axis Paul Muller, a postdoctoral of the research group, said that with the understanding of MMS, we can think about how to reduce the inflammatory response of neurons being killed, such as by promoting the production of polyamines, diet or recovery of intestinal microbial community, so as to develop better treatment methods for IBS Reference: [1] signaling in muscularis macrophases limits infection induced neurological loss [2] Scientists examine how agut infection may produce chronic symptoms