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Glucocorticoid and type 1 interferon interactions at the blood-brain barrier: relevance for drug therapies for

P J Gaillard1, P H van Der Meide, A G de Boer

  • 1Department of Pharmacology, Leiden/Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (LACDR), Leiden University, Sylvius Laboratory, P.O. Box 9503, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.

Neuroreport
|July 12, 2001
PubMed

The pharmacological effect of glucocorticoids and type 1 interferons (IFNs), simultaneously used as therapeuticals for multiple sclerosis (MS), on the (inflamed) blood-brain barrier (BBB) was investigated in vitro. Although both drugs additively decreased BBB permeability, they did not prevent the increase in BBB permeability induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which served as a pro-inflammatory stimulus. The beneficial clinical effect of glucocorticoid and IFN therapy for MS seems there- fore not to be mediated through a direct action at the level of the BBB. Most strikingly, however, pretreatment with type 1 IFNs (alpha and beta) potentiated the effect of glucocorticoids by two orders of magnitude. This lead us to hypothesize that type 1 IFNs may restore the dysfunctional T-helper 1 (Th1)/Th2 balance associated with MS, by a mechanism that involves an increased sensitivity for glucocorticoids.

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