Chronic hM3Dq signaling in microglia ameliorates neuroinflammation in male mice

William Binning; Aja E. Hogan-Cann; Diana Yae Sakae; Matthew Maksoud; Valeriy Ostapchenko; Mohammed Al-Onaizi; Sara Matovic; Wei-Yang Lu; Marco A. M. Prado; Wataru Inoue; Vania F. Prado

Mice in which hM3Dq was activated by CNO showed longer social interaction in the threechamber social preference task than vehicle-treated mice when examined at 2 hour after LPS indicating that, as expected (Corona et al., 2010) , peripheral LPS injection decreased social interaction. Importantly, exploratory activity of CNO-treated mice injected with LPS (338.00  20.51; Fig 6C; N=11) was very similar to that of mice that did not receive LPS, with or without CNO (319.8  18.37; Fig 4G; N=20) . These results suggest that chronic activation of hM3Dq in microglia protects against LPS-induced suppression of social interaction. Twenty-four hours after LPS injection, vehicle-injected mice showed increased social interaction (Fig. 6C) , consistent with the time course of recovery of social interaction following low-dose LPS injection (Corona et al., 2010) . At the 24h time point, there was no difference between vehicle-and CNO-treated groups.