Morphine induced exacerbation of sepsis is mediated by tempering endotoxin tolerance through modulation of miR-146a

Santanu Banerjee, Jingjing Meng, Subhas Das, Anitha Krishnan, Justin Haworth, Richard Charboneau, Yan Zeng, Sundaram Ramakrishnan, Sabita Roy

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55 Scopus citations

Abstract

Development of tolerance to endotoxin prevents sustained hyper inflammation during systemic infections. Here we report for the first time that chronic morphine treatment tempers endotoxin tolerance resulting in persistent inflammation, septicemia and septic shock. Morphine was found to down-regulate endotoxin/LPS induced miR-146a and 155 in macrophages. However, only miR-146a over expression, but not miR-155 abrogates morphine mediated hyper-inflammation. Conversely, antagonizing miR-146a (but not miR-155) heightened the severity of morphine-mediated hyper-inflammation. These results suggest that miR-146a acts as a molecular switch controlling hyper-inflammation in clinical and/or recreational use of morphine.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number1977
JournalScientific reports
Volume3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by the NIH grants RO1 DA 12104, RO1 DA 022935, RO1 DA031202, K05DA033881, P50 DA 011806 and 1R01DA034582 to SRoy.

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