Research
Interleukin-1 beta and neurotrophin-3 synergistically promote neurite growth in vitro
- † Equal contributors
1 Dept. of Functional Morphology & BIOMED Institute, Hasselt University, Belgium
2 Current address: Institut de la Vision, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
3 Institute of Cell Biology and Neurobiology, Center for Anatomy, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany
4 Psychoneuroimmunology, University-Medicine Charité, Charité Center 12 for Internal Medicine and Dermatology, D-10117 Berlin, Germany
5 Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Justus-Liebig-University, Gießen, Germany
6 Institute for Microscopic Anatomy and Neurobiology, University Medicine Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
Journal of Neuroinflammation 2011, 8:183 doi:10.1186/1742-2094-8-183
Published: 26 December 2011Abstract
Pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) are considered to exert detrimental effects during brain trauma and in neurodegenerative disorders. Consistently, it has been demonstrated that IL-1β suppresses neurotrophin-mediated neuronal cell survival rendering neurons vulnerable to degeneration. Since neurotrophins are also well known to strongly influence axonal plasticity, we investigated here whether IL-1β has a similar negative impact on neurite growth. We analyzed neurite density and length of organotypic brain and spinal cord slice cultures under the influence of the neurotrophins NGF, BDNF, NT-3 and NT-4. In brain slices, only NT-3 significantly promoted neurite density and length. Surprisingly, a similar increase of neurite growth was induced by IL-1β. Additionally, both factors increased the number of brain slices displaying maximal neurite growth. Furthermore, the co-administration of IL-1β and NT-3 significantly increased the number of brain slices displaying maximal neurite growth compared to single treatments. These data indicate that these two factors synergistically stimulate two distinct aspects of neurite outgrowth, namely neurite density and neurite length from acute organotypic brain slices.
