Meeting Abstract
S9.1 Tuesday, Jan. 6 Inflammation: History and future of PNI and potential synergy with Integrative Biology KELLEY, Keith W.*; DANTZER, Robert; University of Illinois; University of Illinois kwkelley@illinois.edu
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) formally began as an interdisciplinary science in the 1980s. It is rapidly growing today because it combines the expertise of scientists in clinical medicine, immunology, neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, physiology and pharmacology. Among the many immune processes studied in PNI, inflammation has become the basis for translating fundamental PNI research into human clinical medicine. This development was mainly due to comparative biology. Dorso-ventral development in Drosophila melanogaster is dependent on Toll and regulated by Dorsal. Toll is homologous to the type l IL-1 receptor and Dorsal is similar to NFĸβ. Toll-like receptors bind to pathogen-associated molecular patterns in a very conserved manner. TLRs are also present in the brain. Their activation induces sickness behavior in both invertebrates and humans The syndrome of sickness behavior refers to behavioral changes that occur in an infected organism: lassitude, social withdrawal, fatigue, sleepiness, an increase in pain sensitivity, loss of appetite and weight loss. Sickness behavior is transient and fully reversible after the immune response has cleared the body of pathogens. If the acute inflammatory response is not down regulated, sickness behavior can develop into depression, chronic fatigue, enhanced pain and altered learning and memory. PNI research in mouse has now been applied to humans, leading to development of a quasi-experimental model for inducing depression: injection of interferon-α into patients with malignant melanoma or hepatitis C. The model of interdisciplinary approach used in PNI research is ripe to be applied in traditional integrative biology research to promote a better understanding of the mechanistic underpinnings that regulate development of evolutionary and ecological components of cognition and behavior.
