Brain, behavior, and immunity
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Brain Behav. Immun. · Feb 2017
Systemic inflammatory profiles and their relationships with demographic, behavioural and clinical features in acute low back pain.
Systemic inflammation is linked with development and persistence of many pathological pain states. Although chronic phase inflammatory responses are well reported, the acute phase has received limited attention. Here we investigated circulating pro-inflammatory cytokines and C-reactive protein (CRP), and explored their relationships with symptom severity and other factors in acute low back pain (LBP). ⋯ IL-6 was higher in those with high- than low-pain (p<0.05), but not controls. Various pain and non-pain factors were associated with each biomarker differently. These findings suggest systemic CRP and IL-6 are important contributors to inflammation in the early post-onset phase of LBP and that various factors can shape these responses.
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Brain Behav. Immun. · Feb 2017
Binge ethanol in adulthood exacerbates negative outcomes following juvenile traumatic brain injury.
Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are a major public health problem with enormous costs in terms of health care dollars, lost productivity, and reduced quality of life. Alcohol is bidirectionally linked to TBI as many TBI patients are intoxicated at the time of their injury and we recently reported that, in accordance with human epidemiological data, animals injured during juvenile development self-administered significantly more alcohol as adults than did sham injured mice. There are also clinical data that drinking after TBI significantly reduces the efficacy of rehabilitation and leads to poorer long-term outcomes. ⋯ Binge-like alcohol produced a greater degree of neuronal damage and neuroinflammation in mice that sustained a TBI. Further, mice that sustained a juvenile TBI exhibited mild learning and memory impairments in adulthood following binge alcohol and express a significant increase in hippocampal ectopic localization of newborn neurons. Taken together, these data provide strong evidence that a mild brain injury occurring early in life renders the brain highly vulnerable to the consequences of binge-like alcohol consumption.