Unconjugated
Morphine abuse in treating severe and chronic pain has become a worldwide problem. But, chronic morphine exposure can cause memory impairment with its mechanisms not fully elucidated by past research sstudies which all focused on the harmful effects of morphine. Autophagy is an important pathway for cells to maintain survival. Here we showed that repeated morphine injection into C57BL/6 mice at a dose of 15 mg/kg per day for 7 days activated autophagic flux mainly in the hippocampi, especially in neurons of hippocampal CA1 region and microglia, with spatial memory impairment confirmed by Morris water maze test. Autophagy inhibition by 3-methyladenine obviously aggravates this morphine-induced memory impairment, accompanied with increased cell deaths in stratum pyramidale of hippocampal CA1, CA3, and DG regions and the activation of microglia to induce inflammation in hippocampus, such as upregulated expression of TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and iNOS, as well as NF-κB' s activation, while morphine alone promoted microglial immunosuppression in hippocampus with autophagy activation which was also confirmed in primary microglia. Taken together, our data indicates that autophagy activating in hippocampal cells can alleviate the memory impairment caused by morphine, by decreasing neuronal deaths in hippocampus and suppressing inflammation in hippocampal microglia, implying that modulating the activation of autophagy might be a promising method to prevent or treat the memory impairment caused by morphine.
A fundamental element of acute lung injury (ALI) is the inflammation that is part of the body's immune response to a variety of local or systemic stimuli. Lipoxins (LXs) are important endogenous lipids that mediate resolution of inflammation. Previously, we demonstrated that LXA4 reduced the LPS inhalation-induced pulmonary edema, neutrophil infiltration and TNF-α production in mice. With the same model, the current investigation focused on the role of the airway epithelium, a first-line barrier and a prime target of inhaled toxicants. We report that LXA4 strongly inhibited LPS-induced ALI in mice, in part by protecting the airway epithelium and preserving the E-cadherin expression and airway permeability. Using a cryo-imaging assay and fluorescence detection, LXA4 was shown to block LPS-induced ROS generation and preserve mitochondrial redox status both in vivo and in vitro. To further assess whether and how NF-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) was involved in the protective effect of LXA4, fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) analysis was employed in human epithelial cell line (16HBE), to determine the relative distance between Nrf2 and its negative regulator or cytosolic inhibitor, Kelch-like ECH-associated protein 1 (Keap1). It provided us the evidence that LXA4 further promoted the dissociation of Nrf2 and Keap1 in LPS-treated 16HBE cells. The results also showed that LXA4 activates Nrf2 by phosphorylating it on Ser40 and triggering its nuclear translocation. Moreover, when the plasmid expression dominant negative mutation of Nrf2 was transfected as an inhibitor of wild-type Nrf2, the protective effect of LXA4 on E-cadherin expression was almost completely blocked. These results provide a new mechanism by which LXA4 inhibits LPS-induced ALI through Nrf2-mediated E-cadherin expression.
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