Bacterial Lipoproteins – Inflammatory to the Brain

Excerpt:

The current view is that bacteria need to enter the brain to
cause inflammation.
However, in mice infected with the spirochete Borrelia turicatae,
we observed widespread cerebral inflammation despite a paucity of
spirochetes in the brain parenchyma at times of high bacteremia.
Here we studied the possibility that bacterial lipoproteins may
be capable of disseminating from the periphery across the
blood-brain barrier to inflame the brain. For this we injected
normal and infected mice intraperitoneally with
lanthanide-labeled variable outer membrane lipoproteins of B.
turicatae and measured their localization in blood, various
peripheral organs, and whole and capillary-depleted brain protein
extracts at various times. Lanthanide-labeled nonlipidated
lipoproteins of B. turicatae and mouse albumin were used as
controls. Brain inflammation was measured by TaqMan RT-PCR
amplification of genes known to be up-regulated in response to
borrelial infection.