By Michelle Jaffee
New research reveals that a type of support cell in the spinal cord plays an important role in influencing plasticity of motor neurons responsible for breathing, a key insight that could help refine ongoing studies into a potential therapy for compromised breathing and other movements.
The experimental therapy, called acute intermittent hypoxia, involves delivering a lower level of oxygen in repeated short bursts. A prospective treatment for impaired breathing or other movements in spinal cord injury, ALS, and multiple sclerosis, acute intermittent hypoxia is undergoing testing in translational studies from the lab to human clinical trials.
Now, researchers with the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions and the UF McKnight Brain Institute have shown that spinal microglia — immune cells of the central nervous system — regulate plasticity in respiratory motor neurons that is triggered by the experimental treatment. The findings of the rodent-model study were published Nov. 28 in the journal Nature Communications.
“This study demonstrates that plasticity in the phrenic motor neurons that innervate and contract the diaphragm exhibit plasticity, and that they participate in regulating their own plasticity following therapeutic acute intermittent hypoxia by interacting with nearby cells known as microglia,” said senior author Gordon Mitchell, Ph.D., deputy director of the McKnight Brain Institute and a professor of physical therapy in the College of Public Health and Health Professions.
Read the full story in the McKnight Brain Institute newsroom.