Melatonin Prevents T Lymphocyte Infiltration to the Kidneys of Hypertensive Rats, Induced by a High-Salt Diet, by Preventing the Expression of CXCR3 Ligand Chemokines

Dietary Sodium and Human Health

Sodium, contained in dietary salt, is essential to human life [...].

Neurological damages in COVID-19 patients: Mechanisms and preventive interventions

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a novel coronavirus, causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which led to neurological damage and increased mortality worldwide in its second and third waves. It is associated with systemic inflammation, myocardial infarction, neurological illness including ischemic strokes (e.g., cardiac and cerebral ischemia), and even death through multi-organ failure. At the early stage, the virus infects the lung epithelial cells and is slowly transmitted to the other organs including the gastrointestinal tract, blood vessels, kidneys, heart, and brain. The neurological effect of the virus is mainly due to hypoxia-driven reactive oxygen species (ROS) and generated cytokine storm. Internalization of SARS-CoV-2 triggers ROS production and modulation of the immunological cascade which ultimately initiates the hypercoagulable state and vascular thrombosis. Suppression of immunological machinery and inhibition of ROS play an important role in neurological disturbances. So, COVID-19 associated damage to the central nervous system, patients need special care to prevent multi-organ failure at later stages of disease progression. Here in this review, we are selectively discussing these issues and possible antioxidant-based prevention therapies for COVID-19-associated neurological damage that leads to multi-organ failure.

Psycho-Neuro-Endocrine-Immunology: A Role for Melatonin in This New Paradigm

Psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology is the area of study of the intimate relationship between immune, physical, emotional, and psychological aspects. This new way of studying the human body and its diseases was initiated in the last century’s first decades. However, the molecules that participate in the communication between the immune, endocrine, and neurological systems are still being discovered. This paper aims to describe the development of psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology, its scopes, limitations in actual medicine, and the extent of melatonin within it.

Excessive Sodium Intake Leads to Cardiovascular Disease by Promoting Sex-Specific Dysfunction of Murine Heart

Background

Globally, a high-salt diet (HSD) has become a threat to human health as it can lead to a high risk of cardiac damage. Although some studies investigating HSD have been carried out, the majority has been conducted in males, and there are few female-specific studies, thereby ignoring any effects of sex-specific damage on the heart. In this study, we determined how HSD induces different pathways of cardiovascular diseases through sex-specific effects on cardiac damage in mice.

Methods

An HSD murine model of male and female C57BL/6J mice was fed with sodium-rich chow (4% NaCl). After 8 weeks, cardiac tissues were collected, and the whole gene transcriptome of the hearts of male and female mice was characterized and analyzed using high-throughput RNA sequencing. Immunohistochemistry staining was used to further assess the harmful effects of HSD on protein expression of genes associated with immunity, fibrosis, and apoptosis in male and female mice.

Results

HSD drastically altered the cardiac transcriptome compared to that of the normal heart in both male and female mice and had a sex-specific effect on the cardiac composition in the transcriptome. HSD produced various differentially expressed genes and affected different KEGG pathways of the transcriptome in male and female mice. Furthermore, we found that HSD induced different pathways of cardiovascular disease in the male mice and female mice. The pathway of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is significantly enriched in HSD-treated male mice, while the pathway of dilated cardiomyopathy is significantly enriched in HSD-treated female mice. Finally, metabolism, immunity, fibrosis, and apoptosis in the mouse heart showed sex-specific changes predicting cardiac damage.

Conclusion

Our results demonstrate that HSD adversely impacts cardiac structure and function by affecting the metabolism, immunity, fibrosis, and apoptosis in the murine heart and induces the mouse to suffer from sex-specific cardiovascular disease. This study provides a new perspective and basis for the differences in the pharmacology and interventional treatment of sex-specific cardiovascular diseases induced by HSD in men and women.

The modulatory effect of high salt on immune cells and related diseases

BACKGROUND

The adverse effect of excessive salt intake has been recognized in decades. Researchers have mainly focused on the association between salt intake and hypertension. However, studies in recent years have proposed the existence of extra-renal sodium storage and provided insight into the immunomodulatory function of sodium.

OBJECTIVES

In this review, we discuss the modulatory effects of high salt on various innate and adaptive immune cells and immune-regulated diseases.

METHODS

We identified papers through electronic searches of PubMed database from inception to March 2022.

RESULTS

An increasing body of evidence has demonstrated that high salt can modulate the differentiation, activation and function of multiple immune cells. Furthermore, a high-salt diet can increase tissue sodium concentrations and influence the immune responses in microenvironments, thereby affecting the development of immune-regulated diseases, including hypertension, multiple sclerosis, cancer and infections. These findings provide a novel mechanism for the pathology of certain diseases and indicate that salt might serve as a target or potential therapeutic agent in different disease contexts.

CONCLUSION

High salt has a profound impact on the differentiation, activation and function of multiple immune cells. Additionally, an HSD can modulate the development of various immune-regulated diseases.

Role of chemokine systems in cancer and inflammatory diseases

Chemokines are a large family of small secreted proteins that have fundamental roles in organ development, normal physiology, and immune responses upon binding to their corresponding receptors. The primary functions of chemokines are to coordinate and recruit immune cells to and from tissues and to participate in regulating interactions between immune cells. In addition to the generally recognized antimicrobial immunity, the chemokine/chemokine receptor axis also exerts a tumorigenic function in many different cancer models and is involved in the formation of immunosuppressive and protective tumor microenvironment (TME), making them potential prognostic markers for various hematologic and solid tumors. In fact, apart from its vital role in tumors, almost all inflammatory diseases involve chemokines and their receptors in one way or another. Modulating the expression of chemokines and/or their corresponding receptors on tumor cells or immune cells provides the basis for the exploitation of new drugs for clinical evaluation in the treatment of related diseases. Here, we summarize recent advances of chemokine systems in protumor and antitumor immune responses and discuss the prevailing understanding of how the chemokine system operates in inflammatory diseases. In this review, we also emphatically highlight the complexity of the chemokine system and explore its potential to guide the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases.