title: "Neuropeptides in the brain defense against distant organ damage".
abstract: Delirium, or acute confusional state, is a common manifestation in diseases that originate outside the central nervous system, affecting 30-40% of elderly hospitalized patients and up to 80% of the critically ill, even though it remains unclear if severe systemic inflammation is able or not to induce cellular disturbances and immune activation in the brain. Neuropeptides are pleotropic molecules heterogeneously distributed throughout the brain and possess a wide spectrum of functions, including regulation of the inflammatory response, so we hypothesized that they would be the major alarm system in the brain before overt microglia activation. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we induced acute pancreatitis in 8-10week old rats and collected brain tissue, 12 and 24h following pancreatic injury, to measure neuropeptide and cytokine tissue levels. We found significantly higher levels of β-endorphin, orexin and oxytocin in the brain of rats submitted to pancreatic injury, when compared to healthy controls. Interestingly, these differences were not associated with increased local cytokine levels, putting in evidence that neuropeptide release occurred independently of microglia activation and may be a pivotal alarm system to initiate neurologic reactions to distant inflammatory non-infectious aggression.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Mike Yoshio
authors.initials: MY
authors.lastname: Hamasaki
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Hermes Vieira
authors.initials: HV
authors.lastname: Barbeiro
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Denise Frediani
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Barbeiro
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Débora Maria Gomes
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Cunha
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marcia Kiyomi
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Koike
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Marcel Cerqueira César
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Machado
authors.affiliation: Emergency Medicine Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. Electronic address: pinheirofabiano@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Fabiano
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pinheiro da Silva
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D008297:Male; D009479:Neuropeptides / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism*; D010195:Pancreatitis / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar
chemical_list: D009479:Neuropeptides
keywords: Acute pancreatitis; Biomarkers; Critical care; Inflammation; Neuropeptides