How Meningitis-causing Bacteria Invade the Brain
upstart writes:
Experiments in mice show the microbes hijack cells in the brain's protective cover:
Bacteria can slip into the brain by commandeering cells in the brain's protective layers, a new study finds. The results hint at how a deadly infection called bacterial meningitis takes hold.
In mice infected with meningitis-causing bacteria, the microbes exploit previously unknown communication between pain-sensing nerve cells and immune cells to slip by the brain's defenses, researchers report March 1 in Nature. The results also hint at a new way to possibly delay the invasion - using migraine medicines to interrupt those cell-to-cell conversations.
Bacterial meningitis is an infection of the protective layers, or meninges, of the brain that affects 2.5 million people globally per year. It can cause severe headaches and sometimes lasting neurological injury or death.
"Unexpectedly, pain fibers are actually hijacked by the bacteria as they're trying to invade the brain," says Isaac Chiu, an immunologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Normally, one might expect pain to be a warning system for us to shut down the bacteria in some way, he says. "We found the opposite.... This [pain] signal is being used by the bacteria for an advantage."
Journal Reference:
Pinho-Ribeiro, F.A., Deng, L., Neel, D.V. et al. Bacteria hijack a meningeal neuroimmune axis to facilitate brain invasion. Nature (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05753-x
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