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[A new domain of interleukin-2 and its analgesic effect in central nervous system]
1Department of Neurobiology, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai.
Abstract:
Interleukin-2 (IL-2) possesses not only immunoregulatory activity, but also important effect on central nervous system (CNS). Here we report that IL-2 is an analgesic molecule in CNS and suggest that there are two distinct domains in IL-2 that mediate immune and analgesic activity. It is inferred that the analgesic effect of IL-2 in CNS is mainly mediated through the analgesic domain which is composed of the 45th Tyr-residue, the 44th, 117th Phe-residues and other residues around the 45th-Tyr in tertiary structure, directly binding to the opioid receptors. In addition, we propose that the multiple actions of cytokines might be mediated by interaction of distinct domains with different receptors or receptor subtypes.
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