If we anatomically compare nervus and the immune system we can see that they really look similar. So, are they and how are they connected?
Even old Greeks noticed that mind could control our health! I personally, strongly believe that state of mind can seriously affect our health...
Ader and Cohen 1985. published paper in which they provided evidence for the connection between brain and immune system. They combined the anti-inflammatory drug with saccharine to reduce the immune response. After that even just saccharine had reducing effect (1).
Based on my knowledge this was the first evidence for an effect of the brain on the immune system. Klimenko and Besedovsky provide the first evidence for opposite effect - immune system on the brain (2).
Till 2015. there were few possible mechanisms that could explain interactions between nervous and immune system. First, organs of the immune system (thymus, spleen, lymph nodes) are innervated by the autonomic nervous system and under the effect of hormones secreted by the pituitary gland and second, cytokine activity (3)..
Now we know that long time used the quote that brain is "immunologically privileged" is wrong.
That privilege was considered due to brain lack of lymphatic drainage. In 2015. Dr. Jonathan Kipnis and his group identified the new network of lymphatic vessels in the meninges and published in Nature.
“We believe that for every neurological disease that has an immune component to it, these vessels may play a major role,” says Kipnis.
“The first time these guys showed me the basic result, I just said one sentence: ‘They’ll have to change the textbooks’,” said Kevin Lee, chair of the University of Virginia’s Department of Neuroscience.
In October 2017 in eLife new research was published in which Dr. Daniel S. Reich proved lymphatic vessels in the human brain.
“We literally watched people’s brains drain fluid into these vessels,” Reich says. “We hope that our results provide new insights to a variety of neurological disorders.”
References:
- Ader R and Cohen N (1985) CNS–immune system interactions: conditioning phenomena. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 8: 379–426
- Besedovsky HO and del Rey A (1996) Immune-neuro-endocrine interactions: facts and hypotheses. Endocrine Reviews 18: 64–102
- Dunn, A. J. 2005. Nervous and Immune System Interactions. eLS.