Cell: the nervous system or plays a key role in fighting intestinal infections

January 15, 2020 / BIOON / -- the peaceful and delicate coexistence between friendly intestinal flora and immune system depends on the highly coordinated exchange of information between immune cells and intestinal inner wall cells Recently, an international journal published in cell In the previous report, scientists from Yale University found that two special cell types or the production of antibacterial compounds are very important to resist the dangerous infection of the body Photo source: cc0 public domain researchers said that in order to respond to bacterial invaders, nerve cells in the gut (not cells or immune cells in the intestinal wall) may release cytokines to resist infection; relevant research results may help to clarify how the body reacts to bacterial infections that induce food poisoning and other diseases Professor Richard Flavell, researcher, said that we believe that cells of the immune system and gut barrier cells can coordinate with each other to mobilize the production of antibacterial proteins to resist foreign invaders However, this story is not true The nervous system of the body will tell the barrier cells what to do It turns out that in the fight against intestinal pathogens, "infantry" is the interleukin-18 molecule (IL-18) in the immune system, and IL-18 is part of the immune system When the researchers removed IL-18 from immune cells and intestinal barrier cells, they found that mice could effectively resist intestinal infection caused by Salmonella The researchers pointed out that this may exclude the factors that induce the immune response of the body, but mice that do not carry the IL-18 produced by neural system cells are more vulnerable to infection, which revealed that they play a role in the process of anti infection The key role of Finally, the researchers said that considering the ability of long-distance communication in the nervous system, nerve cells play a very important role in the process of resisting pathogen infection The results of this study may help scientists to further study and develop new methods in the later stage to intervene the infection process of the body through the immune system Original source: Abigail Jarret, ruidhr í Jackson, coco Duzer, et al Enteric nervous system-derived IL-18 orchestrates mycosal barrier immunity, cell (2019) doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.12.016