Loss of survival factors and activation of inflammatory cascades in brain sympathetic centers in type 1 diabetic mice.

Neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration have been observed in the brain in type 1 diabetes (T1D). However, little is known about the mediators of these effects. In T1D mice with 12- and 35-wk duration of diabetes we examined two mechanisms of neurodegeneration, loss of the neuroprotective factors insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) and IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) and changes in indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) expression in the brain, and compared the response to age-matched controls. Furthermore, levels of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), nucleoside triphosphate diphosphohydrolase-1 (CD39), and ionized calcium-binding adaptor molecule 1 (Iba-1) were utilized to assess inflammatory changes in astrocytes, microglia, and blood vessels. In the diabetic hypothalamus (HYPO), we observed 20% reduction in neuronal soma diameter (P<0.05) and reduced neuronal expression of IGFBP-3 (-32%, P<0.05) and IGF-I (-15%, P<0.05) compared with controls at 35 wk. In diabetic HYPO, MMP-2 expression was increased in astrocytes (46%, P<0.01), and IDO⁺ cell density rose by (62%, P<0.05). CD39 expression dropped by 30% (P<0.05) in microglia and blood vessels. With 10 wk of systemic treatment using minocycline, an anti-inflammatory agent that crosses the blood-brain barrier, MMP-2, IDO, and CD39 levels normalized (P<0.05). Our results suggest that increased IDO and early loss of CD39⁺ protective cells lead to activation of inflammation in sympathetic centers of the CNS. As a downstream effect, the loss of the neuronal survival factors IGFBP-3 and IGF-I and the neurotoxic products of the kynurenine pathway contribute to the loss of neuronal density observed in the HYPO in T1D

Pharmacosynthetic Deconstruction of Sleep-Wake Circuits in the Brain.

Over the past decade, basic sleep research investigating the circuitry controlling sleep and wakefulness has been boosted by pharmacosynthetic approaches, including chemogenetic techniques using designed receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADD). DREADD offers a series of tools that selectively control neuronal activity as a way to probe causal relationship between neuronal sub-populations and the regulation of the sleep-wake cycle. Following the path opened by optogenetics, DREADD tools applied to discrete neuronal sub-populations in numerous brain areas quickly made their contribution to the discovery and the expansion of our understanding of critical brain structures involved in a wide variety of behaviors and in the control of vigilance state architecture.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe