Diabetic conditions are associated with modified brain function, namely with cognitive deficits, through largely undetermined processes. More than understanding the underlying mechanism, it is important to devise novel strategies to alleviate diabetes-induced cognitive deficits. Caffeine (a mixed antagonist of adenosine A(1) and A(2A) receptors) emerges as a promising candidate since caffeine c...

Midkine (MK) is a cytokine that modulates amphetamine-induced striatal astrogliosis, suggesting a possible role of MK in neuroinflammation induced by amphetamine. To test this hypothesis, we studied astrogliosis and microglial response induced by amphetamine (10 mg/kg i.p. four times, every 2 h) in different brain areas of MK-/- mice and wild type (WT) mice. We found that amphetamine-induced mi...

Particularly in small brain biopsies, it might be difficult to distinguish reactive astrogliosis from low-grade or infiltration zones of high-grade astrocytomas. So far no immunohistochemical marker allows a reliable distinction. Recently, the over-expression of Wilms' tumor gene product WT1 was reported in astrocytic tumor cells. However, no sufficient data on WT1 expression in normal or react...

Traumatic injury to the brain initiates an increase in astrocyte and microglial infiltration as part of an inflammatory response to injury. Increased astrogliosis around the injury impedes regeneration of axons through the injury, while activated microglia release inflammatory mediators. The persistent inflammatory response can lead to local progressive cell death. Modulating the astrocyte and ...

Increasing evidence suggests that Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) contributes importantly to spinal cord glial activation and chronic pain sensitization; however, its unique role in acute and chronic itch is unclear. In this study, we investigated the involvement of TLR4 in acute and chronic itch models in male mice using both transgenic and pharmacological approaches. Tlr4 mice exhibited normal ac...

Accumulating evidence suggests that reactive astrogliosis has beneficial and detrimental outcomes in various CNS disorders, but the mechanism behind this dichotomy is unclear. Recent advances in this direction suggested that NO signaling is critical to regulate the outcomes of reactive astrogliosis in vivo. Using biochemical and genetic approaches, we here investigated the effect of S-nitrosogl...

After brain injury, astrocytes acquire a reactive phenotype characterized by a series of morphological and molecular modifications, including the expression of the cytoskeletal protein vimentin. Previous studies have shown that estradiol down-regulates reactive astrogliosis. In this study we assessed whether raloxifene and tamoxifen, two selective estrogen receptor modulators, have effects simi...

The gene responsible for neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) encodes a tumor suppressor that functions as a negative regulator of the Ras proto-oncogene. Individuals with germline mutations in NF1 are predisposed to the development of benign and malignant tumors of the peripheral and central nervous system (CNS). Children with this disease suffer a high incidence of optic gliomas, a benign but poten...

The diffusion parameters in rat cortex were studied 3-35 days following a cortical stab wound, using diffusion-weighted MR to determine the apparent diffusion coefficient of water (ADC(W)) in the tissue, and the real-time iontophoretic tetramethylammonium (TMA) method to measure the extracellular space (ECS) diffusion parameters: ECS volume fraction alpha and the ADC of TMA(+) (ADC(TMA)). Sever...

Astrocytes are highly involved in regulation and homeostasis of the extracellular environment in the healthy brain. In pathological conditions, these cells play a major role in the inflammatory response seen in CNS tissues, which is called reactive astrogliosis and includes hypertrophy and proliferation of astrocytes. Here, we performed 3D confocal microscopy to evaluate the morphological respo...