Cell Rep: a new type of brain cell regulating anxiety response

October 24, 2019 / biourn / -- according to the National Institute of mental health, one in three people will feel "weak anxiety", which will affect their normal life Women are also more likely to develop anxiety disorders However, the causes of anxiety and other anxiety related diseases (such as obsessive-compulsive disorder) are still unclear In a new study, scientists at the University of Utah found a new special brain cell subpopulation, called Hoxb8 microglia, and linked it to obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety disorder Studies have shown that mice with Hoxb8 microglial defects exhibit excessive "grooming" behavior The symptoms are similar to the behavior of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which causes them to comb their hair excessively Their experiments show that Hoxb8 and microglia can prevent the above-mentioned obsessive-compulsive behaviors in mice In addition, they found that oestrogen also triggers more obsessive-compulsive behavior and causes additional anxiety (image source: www Pixabay Com) "women are more likely to experience anxiety disorders in their lives than men Scientists hope to help these people get back to life In this study, anxiety disorders were associated with microglial dysfunction and estrogen "Our research opens up a new way to think about anxiety," said Dimitri traenkner, an assistant professor of research at the University of Utah's School of biological sciences Now that we have this model, we have a way to test new drugs that can help people with anxiety disorders, and hope that one day it will help people The results were recently published in the journal Cell reports It is found that new microglia subsets are essential for brain development from the embryonic stage: they ensure that brain structures and neural circuits are properly connected Traenkner and colleagues have shown that microglia have at least two different subsets A type of microglia, called Hoxb8, accounts for about 30% of all microglia in the brain, but until now, no one knows whether they have any unique function Mario Capecchi, a Nobel laureate and senior author of the study, has long suspected that Hoxb8 microglia has a special engineering In a previous study, he built a Hoxb8 pedigree of microglial deficient mice and predicted some effects on development But the mice look very healthy "We don't know why Hoxb8 deficient mice don't look different from wild mice until we notice that they comb their hair much longer than healthy mice." "Researchers have long suspected that microglia can play a role in human anxiety and neuropsychological diseases, because this cell type can release substances that may damage neurons However, we found that microglia can actually protect themselves from anxiety, rather than cause anxiety, "trainkner added The severity of the symptoms of female sex hormone - induced aggravating mice showed a significant gender correlation: the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in female mice were always more severe than that in male mice Female mice also showed another anxiety symptom that male mice lacked - researchers designed and validated a new test that showed that the pupils of female mice dilated dramatically as a result of fighting or escaping stress reactions In order to test whether estrogen can drive the onset of obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety symptoms, the authors artificially regulate the levels of estrogen and progesterone in mice They found that no matter the gender of the mice, when the hormone level was adjusted to the normal level of the male mice, the obsessive-compulsive behavior and anxiety behavior of the female mice were similar to that of the male mice, but when they were raised to the normal level of the female mice, the obsessive-compulsive behavior of the male mice began to become more like that of the female mice, that is, more serious What does this mean for humans? For many people, anxiety can seriously affect their work, friends, family and lifestyle Scientists and health care professionals have been looking for ways to help people return to normal life The study linked anxiety to microglia with abnormal function Therefore, these findings may lead to new research focusing on microglia in anxiety patients, which will eventually help to better treat this debilitating disease Source of information: unique brain cells linked to OCD and anxiety original source: Dimitri tr ä nkner, Anne Boulet, Erik Peden, Richard Focht, don van Deren, Mario Capecchi A microglia sublineage protection from sex linked anxiety symptoms and objective calculation Cell reports, 2019; 29 (4): 791 doi: 10.1016/j.cellep.2019.09.045