Acidifying Remyelination

Jagielska A, Wilhite KD, Van Vliet KJ. Extracellular Acidic pH Inhibits Oligodendrocyte Precursor Viability, Migration, and Differentiation. PLoS One. 2013 Sep 30;8(9):e76048.


Axon remyelination in the central nervous system requires oligodendrocytes that produce myelin. Failure of this repair process is characteristic of neurodegeneration in demyelinating diseases such as multiple sclerosis, and it remains unclear how the lesion microenvironment contributes to decreased remyelination potential of oligodendrocytes. Here, we show that acidic extracellular pH, which is characteristic of demyelinating lesions, decreases the migration, proliferation, and survival of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), and reduces their differentiation into oligodendrocytes. Further, OPCs exhibit directional migration along pH gradients toward acidic pH. These in vitro findings support a possible in vivo scenario whereby pH gradients attract OPCs toward acidic lesions, but resulting reduction in OPC survival and motility in acid decreases progress toward demyelinated axons and is further compounded by decreased differentiation into myelin-producing oligodendrocytes. As these processes are integral to OPC response to nerve demyelination, our results suggest that lesion acidity could contribute to decreased remyelination.
This does not need explaining, but if OPCs are attracted to acidic environments and demyelinated lesions are acidic, why don't we get remyelination asdemyelinated lesions contain numerous OPC. Maybe it is not that simple.

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