Systemic Immune Activation Leads to Neuroinflammation and Sickness Behavior in Mice

Substantial evidence indicates an association between clinical depression and altered immune function. Systemic administration of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is commonly used to study inflammation-associated behavioral changes in rodents. In these experiments, we tested the hypothesis that pe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mediators of Inflammation 2013-01, Vol.2013 (2013), p.781-794-069
Main Authors: Langlois, Xavier, Matthews, Liam J. R., Ver Donck, Luc, Hellings, Niels, Nuydens, Rony, Biesmans, Steven, Kuijlaars, Jacobine, De Haes, Patrick, Davoodi, Nima, Meert, Theo F., Bouwknecht, Jan A., Acton, Paul D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Astrocytes - cytology
Behavior, Animal
Brain - immunology
Brain - metabolism
Calcium-Binding Proteins - metabolism
Choice Behavior
Cytokines - blood
Cytokines - metabolism
Depression - immunology
Depression, Mental
Disease Models, Animal
Feeding Behavior
Illness Behavior
Immune response
Immunohistochemistry
Inflammation
Inflammation - pathology
Lipopolysaccharides - chemistry
Luminescence
Male
Mice
Mice, Transgenic
Microfilament Proteins - metabolism
Microglia - metabolism
Neurological research
Neurons - metabolism
Physiological aspects
Sucrose - chemistry
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Substantial evidence indicates an association between clinical depression and altered immune function. Systemic administration of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) is commonly used to study inflammation-associated behavioral changes in rodents. In these experiments, we tested the hypothesis that peripheral immune activation leads to neuroinflammation and depressive-like behavior in mice. We report that systemic administration of LPS induced astrocyte activation in transgenic GFAP-luc mice and increased immunoreactivity against the microglial marker ionized calcium-binding adapter molecule 1 in the dentate gyrus of wild-type mice. Furthermore, LPS treatment caused a strong but transient increase in cytokine levels in the serum and brain. In addition to studying LPS-induced neuroinflammation, we tested whether sickness could be separated from depressive-like behavior by evaluating LPS-treated mice in a panel of behavioral paradigms. Our behavioral data indicate that systemic LPS administration caused sickness and mild depressive-like behavior. However, due to the overlapping time course and mild effects on depression-related behavior per se, it was not possible to separate sickness from depressive-like behavior in the present rodent model.
ISSN:0962-9351
1466-1861
DOI:10.1155/2013/271359