Carbon monoxide is the heme oxygenase product with a pyretic action: evidence for a cGMP signaling pathway.

We have recently reported that the central heme oxygenase (HO) pathway has an important role in the genesis of lipopolysaccharide fever. However, the HO product involved, i.e., biliverdine, free iron, or carbon monoxide (CO), has not yet been identified with certainty. Therefore, in the present study, we tested the thermoregulatory effects of all HO products. Body core temperature (T(c)) and gross activity of awake, freely moving rats was measured by biotelemetry. Intracerebroventricular administration of heme-lysinate (152 nmol), which induces the HO pathway, evoked a marked increase in T(c), a response that was attenuated by intracerebroventricular pretreatment with the HO inhibitor zinc deuteroporphyrin 2,4-bis glycol (200 nmol), indicating that an HO product has a pyretic action in the central nervous system (CNS) of rats. Besides, heme-lysinate also increased gross activity, but no correlation was found between this effect and the increase in T(c). Moreover, intracerebroventricular biliverdine or iron salts at 152 nmol, a dose at which heme-lysinate was effective in increasing T(c), produced no change in T(c). Accordingly, intracerebroventricular treatment with the iron chelator deferoxamine elicited no change in basal T(c) and did not affect heme-induced pyresis. However, heme-induced pyresis was completely prevented by the soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC) inhibitor 1H-[1,2,4]oxadiazolo[4,3,-a]quinoxaline-1-one. Because biliverdine and iron had no thermoregulatory effects and CO produces most of its actions via sGC, these data strongly imply that CO is the only HO product with a pyretic action in the CNS.