{"title":"Sensory neurons on guard: roles in pathogen defense and host immunity","authors":"Ozge Erdogan , Xiao-Qian Hu , Isaac M Chiu","doi":"10.1016/j.coi.2025.102541","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The nervous system, like the immune system, constantly interfaces with the environment, encountering threats, including pathogens. Recent discoveries reveal an emerging role for sensory neurons in host defense and immunity. Sensory neurons detect infections either by directly sensing microbial signals or through immune mediators. Beyond pathogen detection, they modulate immune responses and local inflammation by interacting with immune cells, influencing inflammation and pathogen clearance. Additionally, sensory neurons trigger protective reflexes — such as pain, coughing, sneezing, and itching — that can help expel pathogens but may also facilitate their spread. Sensory neurons may also encode and shape long-term immunity. Understanding the roles of neurons in pathogen defense could offer new insights into infectious diseases and highlight therapeutic opportunities for immune modulation.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11361,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Immunology","volume":"93 ","pages":"Article 102541"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Current Opinion in Immunology","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0952791525000172","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"IMMUNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The nervous system, like the immune system, constantly interfaces with the environment, encountering threats, including pathogens. Recent discoveries reveal an emerging role for sensory neurons in host defense and immunity. Sensory neurons detect infections either by directly sensing microbial signals or through immune mediators. Beyond pathogen detection, they modulate immune responses and local inflammation by interacting with immune cells, influencing inflammation and pathogen clearance. Additionally, sensory neurons trigger protective reflexes — such as pain, coughing, sneezing, and itching — that can help expel pathogens but may also facilitate their spread. Sensory neurons may also encode and shape long-term immunity. Understanding the roles of neurons in pathogen defense could offer new insights into infectious diseases and highlight therapeutic opportunities for immune modulation.
期刊介绍:
Current Opinion in Immunology aims to stimulate scientifically grounded, interdisciplinary, multi-scale debate and exchange of ideas. It contains polished, concise and timely reviews and opinions, with particular emphasis on those articles published in the past two years. In addition to describing recent trends, the authors are encouraged to give their subjective opinion of the topics discussed.
In Current Opinion in Immunology we help the reader by providing in a systematic manner: 1. The views of experts on current advances in their field in a clear and readable form. 2. Evaluations of the most interesting papers, annotated by experts, from the great wealth of original publications.
Current Opinion in Immunology will serve as an invaluable source of information for researchers, lecturers, teachers, professionals, policy makers and students.
Current Opinion in Immunology builds on Elsevier''s reputation for excellence in scientific publishing and long-standing commitment to communicating reproducible biomedical research targeted at improving human health. It is a companion to the new Gold Open Access journal Current Research in Immunology and is part of the Current Opinion and Research(CO+RE) suite of journals. All CO+RE journals leverage the Current Opinion legacy-of editorial excellence, high-impact, and global reach-to ensure they are a widely read resource that is integral to scientists'' workflow.