Participation of endocannabinoid system on TNF-alpha release from rat astrocytes stimulated with lipopolysaccharide

VALERIA LUCE; CARLA CARUSO; LILA CARNIGLIA; MERCEDES LASAGA; VALERIA RETTORI; ANDREA DE LAURENTIIS

San Petersburgo

Congreso; III International Symposium: Interactions of the nervous and immune systems in health and disease; 2011

It is known, that in response to several stimuli like bacterial endotoxins, astrocytes release proinflammatory mediators, such us TNF-alpha, which may play an important role in eliciting neuroinflammatory processes causing brain damage. Since cannabinoids have been reported to exert anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective actions in the brain, we examined the participation of the endogenous cannabinoid system on TNF-alpha release elicited by bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in combination with interferon gamma (INF) in primary cultured rat astrocytes. Exposure of cultured astrocytes to LPS (1ug/ml) + INF (50ng/ml) during 90 min, 4 h and 24 hs significantly stimulated (p