Key result
Immune and autonomic systems mediate bidirectional heart-brain axis communication in health and disease.
Why the study?
The brain-heart interaction is an important physiological axis altered in disease, but the role of innate and adaptive immune mechanisms mediating this bidirectional communication requires further exploration beyond the autonomic nervous system.
Understanding the immunological mechanisms of the heart-brain axis may provide new insights into how cardiovascular diseases affect cognitive functions and how brain pathologies lead to cardiac complications.
Highlights heart-brain axis mechanisms in cardio-cognitive disease; leaves open targeted immunomodulation pending mechanistic validation.
The importance of the brain-heart interaction has been increasingly recognized as a critical physiological axis that is altered in disease. In this review, we explore the intricate relationship between the central nervous system and cardiovascular health, focusing particularly on immunological mechanisms that influence the course of both neurological and cardiovascular diseases. While previous studies have established a key role of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in linking brain and the heart, more recent studies have expanded our understanding of the multifaceted inter-organ interactions. As such, circulating mediators include immune cells of the adaptive and innate immune system and their secreted immunogenic factors have come into the focus as mediators along this bidirectional communication. Hence, in this review we briefly discuss the contribution of the ANS and then focus on innate and adaptive immune mechanisms along the heart-to-brain and brain-to-heart axes, illustrating how cardiovascular diseases affect cognitive functions and how brain pathologies lead to cardiac complications.
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Simats et al. (2024) conducted a review in Neurological and cardiovascular diseases. This review highlights the role of innate and adaptive immune mechanisms and the autonomic nervous system in mediating bidirectional communication along the heart-brain axis in health and disease.