Involvement of Disabled-2 protein in the central nervous system inflammation following experimental cryoinjury of rat brains

Disabled-2 (Dab-2) functions in the mitogenic signal transduction pathway, and is expressed in a variety of tissues. We investigated the roles of Dab-2 expression in the rat brain following experimental cryoinjury in relation to central nervous system (CNS) inflammation. Western blot analysis showed that Dab-2 expression increased significantly (p < 0.001) in the frontal cortex 4-14 days after cryoinjury, and declined slightly thereafter. Immunohistochemistry showed that Dab-2 immunostaining occurred in most of the vessels in the control cerebral cortex. After cryoinjury, Dab-2 was localized in the majority of inflammatory cells (especially in ED1-positive macrophages) in the core and periphery, as well as in vessels. These findings suggest that Dab-2 is involved in the inflammation that follows CNS injury through the migration of activated inflammatory cells in the rat brain.