Parkinson’s Disease
Volume 2011, Article ID 327089, 7 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.4061/2011/327089
Lipopolysaccharide Animal Models for Parkinson's Disease
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology, College of Medicine, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40536, USA
Received 24 November 2010; Accepted 28 February 2011
Academic Editor: Gilles J. Guillemin
Copyright © 2011 Mei Liu and Guoying Bing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an endotoxin from Gram-negative bacteria, acts as a potent stimulator of microglia and has been used to study the inflammatory process in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD) and anti-inflammatory therapy for PD treatment. Here, we review the growing body of literature on both in vitro and in vivo LPS PD models. Primary cell cultures from mesencephalic tissue were exposed to LPS in vitro; LPS was stereotaxically injected into the substantia nigra, striatum, or globus pallidus of brain or injected into the peritoneal cavity of the animal in vivo. In conclusion, the LPS PD models are summarized as (1) local and direct LPS treatment and (2) systemic LPS treatment. Mechanisms underlying the PD models are investigated and indicated that LPS induces microglial activation to release a variety of neurotoxic factors, and damaged neurons may trigger reactive microgliosis, which lead to progressive dopaminergic neurodegeneration.