Turnbull A V, Rivier C L
The Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Biology, The Salk Institute, La Jolla, California, USA.
Physiol Rev. 1999 Jan;79(1):1-71. doi: 10.1152/physrev.1999.79.1.1.
Glucocorticoids are hormone products of the adrenal gland, which have long been recognized to have a profound impact on immunologic processes. The communication between immune and neuroendocrine systems is, however, bidirectional. The endocrine and immune systems share a common "chemical language," with both systems possessing ligands and receptors of "classical" hormones and immunoregulatory mediators. Studies in the early to mid 1980s demonstrated that monocyte-derived or recombinant interleukin-1 (IL-1) causes secretion of hormones of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, establishing that immunoregulators, known as cytokines, play a pivotal role in this bidirectional communication between the immune and neuroendocrine systems. The subsequent 10-15 years have witnessed demonstrations that numerous members of several cytokine families increase the secretory activity of the HPA axis. Because this neuroendocrine action of cytokines is mediated primarily at the level of the central nervous system, studies investigating the mechanisms of HPA activation produced by cytokines take on a more broad significance, with findings relevant to the more fundamental question of how cytokines signal the brain. This article reviews published findings that have documented which cytokines have been shown to influence hormone secretion from the HPA axis, determined under what physiological/pathophysiological circumstances endogenous cytokines regulate HPA axis activity, established the possible sites of cytokine action on HPA axis hormone secretion, and identified the potential neuroanatomic and pharmacological mechanisms by which cytokines signal the neuroendocrine hypothalamus.
糖皮质激素是肾上腺分泌的激素产物，长期以来人们一直认为它对免疫过程有深远影响。然而，免疫和神经内分泌系统之间的通信是双向的。内分泌和免疫系统共享一种共同的“化学语言”，这两个系统都拥有“经典”激素和免疫调节介质的配体和受体。20世纪80年代初至中期的研究表明，单核细胞衍生的或重组的白细胞介素-1（IL-1）可引起下丘脑-垂体-肾上腺（HPA）轴激素的分泌，这表明被称为细胞因子的免疫调节因子在免疫和神经内分泌系统之间的这种双向通信中起关键作用。在随后的10 - 15年里，有证据表明几个细胞因子家族的众多成员会增加HPA轴的分泌活性。由于细胞因子的这种神经内分泌作用主要在中枢神经系统水平介导，因此研究细胞因子产生的HPA激活机制具有更广泛的意义，其研究结果与细胞因子如何向大脑发出信号这一更基本的问题相关。本文回顾了已发表的研究结果，这些结果记录了哪些细胞因子已被证明会影响HPA轴的激素分泌，确定了内源性细胞因子在何种生理/病理生理情况下调节HPA轴活性，确定了细胞因子对HPA轴激素分泌的可能作用部位，并确定了细胞因子向神经内分泌下丘脑发出信号的潜在神经解剖学和药理学机制。
