Critical role of capsaicin-sensitive sensory neurons in gender difference in the stress-induced gastric mucosal injury in rats

Excerpt

Recent studies have demonstrated that the outcome of critically ill patients is better in females than in males. Although estrogen has been shown to be critically involved in regulation of immune responses, the detailed mechanism(s) underlying such gender differences has yet to be fully understood. Since proinflammation plays a critical role in the development of the organ dysfunction seen in such critically ill patients, estrogen might show any anti-inflammatory effects to attenuate such inflammatory responses. We previously reported that capsaicin-sensitive sensory neurons (CSSN), nociceptive neurons, play an important role in attenuating inflammatory responses by releasing calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), which promotes the endothelial production of prostacyclin, one of the anti-inflammatory prostaglandins [1]. Since estrogen increases the synthesis of nerve growth factor, which increases the CGRP production, estrogen might attenuate inflammatory responses by promoting CGRP release from CSSN. We examined this possibility in the present study. …