STUDY ON THE ROLE OF IL-6/IL-6R/GP130 SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION PATHWAY IN NEUROIMMUNOMODULATION

Shuangyan Zheng^{1, 2, #}, Chunrong Zeng^{1, 2, #}, Menglan Liu^{1, 2}, Panyi Xiang^{1, 2}, Lin Wang^{1, 2}, Zuoxiao Li^{1, 2, *} 

¹Department of Neurology, the Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou, Sichuan, 646000, China - ²Neurological Diseases and Brain Function Laboratory, Luzhou, Sichuan, 646000, China

Objective: To analyze the role of the IL-6/IL-6R/gp130 signal transduction pathway in neuroimmunomodulation.

Methods: IL-6 knockout mice (experimental group) and normal mice were divided into a non-immune group, immune 2d group, immune 4d group, immune 6d group or immune 8d group, with eight mice in each group. To compare the expression of IL-1β between mice with varying immune status, the immunohistochemistry method was used to measure the expression of IL-1β in the central brain region of mice. Then, the ELISA method recorded the expression of IL-1β and TNF-α in the peripheral blood of mice to study the role of the IL-6/IL-6R signaling pathway in the neuroimmunomodulatory network.

Results: The expression level of IL-1β in the central brain region of mice in the experimental group with varying immune status, was lower than that of normal mice, however this difference was only significant when the immune 4d and immune 6d experimental mice were compared to normal mice (P<0.05). As expected, expression of IL-1β in the central brain regions in non-immune experimental mice was lower than that of the normal group (P<0.05). Although expression of IL-1β in the peripheral blood of mice with varying immune status in the experimental group, was markedly lower than that of normal mice, this difference was only significant in the immune 8d group (P<0.01). As expected, the expression level of IL-1β in the central brain region of mice in the non-immune group was also significantly lower than that of the normal group (P<0.05). The expression level of TNF-α in the peripheral blood of mice with varying immune status in the experimental group was significantly higher than that recorded in the immune 2d group (P<0.05). There was no statistically significant difference in the expression level of TNF-α in the peripheral blood of mice between the non-immune group and the normal group (P>0.05).

Conclusion: The expressions of IL-1β and TNF-α in IL-6 knockout mice under varying immune status were reduced to different degrees. It is speculated that the loss of IL-6/IL-6R signal influences regulation of the peripheral immune system, which is involved in a variety of complex physiological function transmissions and plays an important role in neuroimmunomodulation.