Neuroinflammatory history results in overlapping transcriptional signatures with heroin exposure in the nucleus accumbens and alters responsiveness to heroin in male rats

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Recent progress in psychiatric research has highlighted neuroinflammation in the pathophysiology of opioid use disorder (OUD), suggesting that heightened immune responses in the brain may exacerbate opioid-related mechanisms. However, the molecular mechanisms resulting from neuroinflammation that impact opioid-induced behaviors and transcriptional pathways remain poorly understood. In this study, we have begun to address this critical knowledge gap by exploring the intersection between neuroinflammation and exposure to the opioid heroin, utilizing lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced neuroinflammation, to investigate transcriptional changes in the nucleus accumbens (NAc), an essential region in the mesolimbic dopamine system that mediates opioid reward. By integrating RNA sequencing with bioinformatic and statistical analyses, we observed significant transcriptional overlaps between neuroinflammation and experimenter-administered heroin exposure in the NAc. Furthermore, we identified a subset of NAc genes synergistically regulated by LPS and heroin, suggesting that LPS history may exacerbate some heroin-induced molecular neuroadaptations. We extended our findings to examine the impact of neuroinflammatory history on responsiveness to heroin in a locomotor sensitization assay and observed LPS-induced exacerbation of heroin sensitization, indicating that neuroinflammation may increase sensitivity to opioids’ behavioral effects. Lastly, we performed comparative analysis of the NAc transcriptional profiles of LPS-heroin rats with those obtained from voluntary heroin intake in a rat model of heroin self-administration (SA) and published human OUD datasets. We observed significant convergence of the three datasets and identified transcriptional patterns in the preclinical models that recapitulated human OUD neuropathology, highlighting the utility of preclinical models to further investigate molecular mechanisms of OUD pathology. Overall, our study elucidates transcriptional interconnections between neuroinflammation and heroin exposure, and also provides evidence of the behavioral ramifications of such interactions. By bridging the gap between neuroinflammation and heroin exposure at the transcriptional level, our work provides valuable insights for future research aimed at mitigating the influence of inflammatory pathways in OUD.