Journal of Alzheimers Disease & Parkinsonism
Open Access

Mini Review

Chemokine Interleukin-8 (IL-8) in Alzheimer's and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases

James G McLarnon^*

 The University of British Columbia, Vancouver British Columbia, V6T1W3, Canada

*Corresponding Author:

James G McLarnon
Department of Anesthesiology
Pharmacology and Therapeutics
The University of British Columbia
Vancouver British Columbia, V6T1W3
Canada
Tel: 1-604-2638813
E-mail: mclarnon@mail.ubc.ca

Received date September 21, 2016; Accepted date October 18, 2016; Published date October 25, 2016

Citation: McLarnon JG (2016) Chemokine Interleukin-8 (IL-8) in Alzheimer’s and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases. J Alzheimers Dis Parkinsonism 6:273. doi:10.4172/2161-0460.1000273

Copyright: © 2016 McLarnon JG. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Interleukin -8 (IL-8), a member of the CXC chemokine family, is well-documented as an important chemotactic signaling factor for recruitment of neutrophils to sites of infection and damage. However in neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), it is the resident macrophage cells, microglia, which are primary responding cells to brain insult such as deposition of amyloid β peptide. IL-8 exhibits an autocrine interaction with microglia by inducing a recruitment of the cells to specific sites of inflammation and subsequent increased production of the chemokine from activated cells. This positive feedback process thus has the capacity to amplify and sustain inflammatory response and brain neuroinflammation. The net result is that a localized and enhanced inflammatory response is induced by accumulating activated microglia at sites of inflammation serving to exacerbate inflammatory reactivity in AD brain. Importantly, under certain conditions the chemotaxis and subsequent activation of microglia may be deleterious to bystander cells including neurons. This review summarizes work from selected studies concerning the involvement and contributions of IL-8 mobilization from activated microglia to brain neuroinflammation as documented in the neurodegenerative diseases Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Huntington’s disease (HD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Parkinson’s disease (PD).

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