Abstract
Chronic stress is now recognized as a risk factor for disease development and/or exacerbation. It has been shown to affect negatively the immune system and notably the humoral immune response. Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) is known to play a crucial role in stress response. CRH receptors are expressed on different immune cells such as granulocytes, monocytes and T cells. However, up to now, no CRH receptor has been described on B cells which are key players of the humoral immune response. In order to highlight new pathways by which stress may impact immunity, we investigated the role of CRH in B cells. Here we show that splenic B cells express the CRH receptor 2 (CRHR2), but not CRHR1. This receptor is functional since CRH treatment of B cells activates different signaling pathways (e.g. p38) and decreases B cell viability. Finally, we show that immunization of mice with two types of antigens induces a more intense CRHR staining in secondary lymphoid organs where B cells are known to respond to the antigen. Altogether our results demonstrate, for the first time, that CRH is able to modulate directly B cell activity through the presence of CRHR2.
Highlights
Stress is known to impact the immune system
As two types of Corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) receptors have been described, CRHR1 and CRH receptor 2 (CRHR2), we wondered which one could be expressed by murine splenic B cells
RNA was extracted from these splenic B cells and RT-PCRs were performed with two pairs of primers defined in specific parts of CRHR1 and CRHR2 transcripts
Summary
Stress is known to impact the immune system. Effects depend on the duration, the intensity and the type of stressor. CRH receptors (CRHR1 and CRHR2) are present in the CNS and in various tissues such as the skin, adrenal glands, heart, spleen and thymus[11,12,13,14] Blood immune cells such as granulocytes, monocytes or T cells express CRHR15,16. It was shown that immunization of CRH transgenic (CRH-Tg) mice decreased humoral immune response and germinal center formation[32,33] Taken together, these studies strongly suggest that CRH is able to modulate B cell activity. We showed that immunizations led to a more specific CRHR labeling in secondary lymphoid organs correlating with B cell areas labeling Taken together, these data show that CRH can act directly on B cells and affect their physiology
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