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Schmidt M, Rossetti AC, Brandwein C, Riva MA, Gass P, Elsner P, Hesse-Macabata J, Hipler UC, Smesny S, Milleit B. Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor Deficiency is Associated with Cognitive Impairment and Elevated Phospholipase A2 Activity in Plasma of Mice. Neuroscience 2022; 480:167-177. [PMID: 34801657 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2021.11.024] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2020] [Revised: 11/08/2021] [Accepted: 11/11/2021] [Indexed: 11/25/2022]
Abstract
Decreased levels of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) are a common finding in schizophrenia. Another well-documented protein linked to schizophrenia is intracellular Ca2+-independent Phospholipase (PLA2). However, the potential association between PLA2 and BDNF with regard to schizophrenia has yet to be examined. In the present study, male and female BDNF knockout mice, a possible genetic model of schizophrenia, were exposed to prenatal stress and tested in the nest test, open field test and T-maze. Following behavioral tests, whole brain and plasma samples were harvested to measure the activity of PLA2. BDNF knockout mice showed cognitive deficits in the T-maze. Furthermore, there was a quadratic association of PLA2 with performance in the open field test. Moreover, BDNF deficiency and female sex were associated with elevated plasma PLA2 levels. The cognitive impairment of BDNF heterozygous mice as well as their increased PLA2 activity in plasma is consistent with findings in schizophrenia patients. The particular elevation of PLA2 activity in females may partly explain sex differences of clinical symptoms in schizophrenia (e.g. age of onset, severity of symptoms). Additionally, PLA2 was significantly correlated with body and adrenal weight after weaning, whereby the latter emphasizes the possible connection of PLA2 with steroidogenesis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michaela Schmidt
- RG Animal Models in Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim (ZI), Medical Faculty of Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, J5, D-68159 Mannheim, Germany.
| | - Andrea Carlo Rossetti
- Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Milan, Via Balzaretti, 9, I-20133 Milan, Italy
| | - Christiane Brandwein
- RG Animal Models in Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim (ZI), Medical Faculty of Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, J5, D-68159 Mannheim, Germany
| | - Marco Andrea Riva
- Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Milan, Via Balzaretti, 9, I-20133 Milan, Italy
| | - Peter Gass
- RG Animal Models in Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health Mannheim (ZI), Medical Faculty of Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, J5, D-68159 Mannheim, Germany
| | - Peter Elsner
- Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Jena, D-07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Jana Hesse-Macabata
- Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Jena, Erfurter Straße 35, D-07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Uta-Christina Hipler
- Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Jena, Erfurter Straße 35, D-07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Stefan Smesny
- Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Jena, D-07743 Jena, Germany
| | - Berko Milleit
- Department of Psychiatry, University Hospital Jena, D-07743 Jena, Germany; Department of Dermatology, University Hospital Jena, Erfurter Straße 35, D-07743 Jena, Germany
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Rossetti AC, Paladini MS, Trepci A, Mallien A, Riva MA, Gass P, Molteni R. Differential Neuroinflammatory Response in Male and Female Mice: A Role for BDNF. Front Mol Neurosci 2019; 12:166. [PMID: 31379496 PMCID: PMC6658805 DOI: 10.3389/fnmol.2019.00166] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/11/2019] [Accepted: 06/17/2019] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
A growing body of evidence supports the close relationship between major depressive disorder (MDD), a severe psychiatric disease more common among women than men, and alterations of the immune/inflammatory system. However, despite the large number of studies aimed at understanding the molecular bases of this association, a lack of information exists on the potential cross-talk between systems known to be involved in depression and components of the inflammatory response, especially with respect to sex differences. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is a neurotrophin with a well-established role in MDD etiopathology: it is altered in depressed patients as well as in animal models of the disease and its changes are restored by antidepressant drugs. Interestingly, this neurotrophin is also involved in the inflammatory response. Indeed, it can be secreted by microglia, the primary innate immune cells in the central nervous system whose functions may be in turn regulated by BDNF. With these premises, in this study, we investigated the reciprocal impact of BDNF and the immune system by evaluating the neuroinflammatory response in male and female BDNF-heterozygous mutant mice acutely treated with the cytokine-inducer lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Specifically, we assessed the potential onset of an LPS-induced sickness behavior as well as changes of inflammatory mediators in the mouse hippocampus and frontal cortex, with respect to both genotype and sex. We found that the increased inflammatory response induced by LPS in the brain of male mice was independent of the genotype, whereas in the female, it was restricted to the heterozygous mice with no changes in the wild-type group, suggestive of a role for BDNF in the sex-dependent effect of the inflammatory challenge. Considering the involvement of both BDNF and neuroinflammation in several psychiatric diseases and the diverse incidence of such pathologies in males and females, a deeper investigation of the mechanisms underlying their interaction may have a critical translational relevance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Carlo Rossetti
- Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Maria Serena Paladini
- Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Ada Trepci
- Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Anne Mallien
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Marco Andrea Riva
- Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
| | - Peter Gass
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany
| | - Raffaella Molteni
- Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine, University of Milan, Milan, Italy
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Abstract
Psychiatric disorders are a heterogeneous group of mental illnesses associated with a high social and economic burden on patients and society. The complex symptomatology of these disorders, coupled with our limited understanding of the structural and functional abnormalities affecting the brains of neuropsychiatric patients, has made it difficult to develop effective medical treatment strategies. With the advent of reprogramming technologies and recent developments in induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell-based protocols for differentiation into defined neuronal cultures and 3-dimensional cerebral organoids, a new era of preclinical disease modeling has begun which could revolutionize drug discovery in psychiatry. This review provides an overview of iPS cell-based disease models in psychiatry and how these models contribute to our understanding of pharmacological drug action. We also propose a refined iPSC-based drug discovery pipeline, ranging from cell-based stratification of patients through improved screening and validation steps to more precise psychopharmacology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Carlo Rossetti
- Author affiliations: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; HITBR Hector Institute for Translational Brain Research gGmbH, Mannheim, Germany; German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany. Address for correspondence: Philipp Koch: ; Julia Ladewig: . All authors contributed equally to the work
| | - Philipp Koch
- Author affiliations: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; HITBR Hector Institute for Translational Brain Research gGmbH, Mannheim, Germany; German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany. Address for correspondence: Philipp Koch: ; Julia Ladewig: . All authors contributed equally to the work
| | - Julia Ladewig
- Author affiliations: Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany; HITBR Hector Institute for Translational Brain Research gGmbH, Mannheim, Germany; German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany. Address for correspondence: Philipp Koch: ; Julia Ladewig: . All authors contributed equally to the work
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Rossetti AC, Paladini MS, Racagni G, Riva MA, Cattaneo A, Molteni R. Genome-wide analysis of LPS-induced inflammatory response in the rat ventral hippocampus: Modulatory activity of the antidepressant agomelatine. World J Biol Psychiatry 2018; 19:390-401. [PMID: 28337940 DOI: 10.1080/15622975.2017.1298839] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/12/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Several studies reported that antidepressant drugs have immune-regulatory effects by acting on specific inflammatory mediators. However, considering the highly complex nature of the inflammatory response, we have adopted an unbiased genome-wide strategy to investigate the immune-regulatory activity of the antidepressant agomelatine in modulating the response to an acute inflammatory challenge. METHODS Microarray analysis was used to identify genes modulated in the ventral hippocampus of adult rats chronically treated with agomelatine (40 mg/kg, os) before being challenged with a single injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 250 μg/kg, i.p.). RESULTS The administration of LPS induced the transcription of 284 genes mainly associated with pathways related to the immune/inflammatory system. Agomelatine modulated pathways not only connected to its antidepressant activity, but was also able to prevent the activation of genes induced by LPS. Further comparisons between gene lists of the diverse experimental groups led to the identification of a few transcripts modulated by LPS on which agomelatine has the larger effect of normalisation. Among them, we found the pro-inflammatory cytokine Il-1β and, interestingly, the metabotropic glutamatergic transporter Grm2. CONCLUSIONS These results are useful to better characterise the association between depression and inflammation, revealing new potential targets for pharmacological intervention for depression associated to inflammation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Carlo Rossetti
- a Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences , University of Milan , Milan , Italy
| | - Maria Serena Paladini
- b Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine , University of Milan , Milan , Italy
| | - Giorgio Racagni
- a Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences , University of Milan , Milan , Italy
| | - Marco Andrea Riva
- a Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences , University of Milan , Milan , Italy
| | - Annamaria Cattaneo
- c Biological Psychiatry Unit , IRCCS Centro San Giovanni di Dio - Fatebenefratelli , Brescia , Italy.,d Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience , King's College London , London , UK
| | - Raffaella Molteni
- b Department of Medical Biotechnology and Translational Medicine , University of Milan , Milan , Italy
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