The cytokine tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF alpha) has been proposed to play a key role in the degenerative processes observed in demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). In the immune system the cellular responses to TNF are mediated by two different receptors: TNF-RI, which is involved in cell death, and TNF-RII, which has been shown to mediate cell proliferation. We investigated the oligodendroglial expression of TNF-RI and -RII. In vivo, in normal adult rodent brain, oligodendrocytes express TNF-RII but not TNF-RI. However, after 3 days in culture, both types of receptors were expressed by mature oligodendrocytes, purified from 4-week-old rats, suggesting that expression of TNF-RI was induced by either the isolation process or the culture conditions. This inducibility of TNF-RI may explain the differences in oligodendrocyte cell death reported in various experimental conditions and in the pathology of MS lesions.
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Tchélingérian et al. (1995) studied this question.