Effects of Th1- and Th17-derived factors on microglia.. Mus musculus

There is evidence that microglia interact with infiltrating Th1 and Th17 cells and this interaction results in mutual activation. However, the potential of a distinct cytokine milieu generated by these effector T cell subsets to activate microglia is poorly understood. In this study, we tested the ability of factors secreted by Th1 and Th17 cells to induce microglial activation. Interestingly, we found that only Th1-associated factors had the potential to activate microglia while the Th17-associated factors as well as direct contact of Th17 cells with microglia only had a minimal effect. Further Th1-derived factors triggered a proinflammatory M1-type gene expression profile in microglia Overall design: Microglia harvested from mixed glial cultures were treated with supernatants from Th1- or Th17 cultures. Microglia cultured in medium was used as controls. At 16h post treatment RNA was isolated from the microglia and probed on Agilent´s murine 4x44k microarrays. RNA isolated from four independent experiments were used for the gene expression profiling. Microglia, Th1, Th17