The aggregation of α-synuclein (α-syn) promotes neuroinflammation and neuronal apoptosis, which eventually contribute to the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). Our microarray analysis and experimental data indicated a significant expression difference of the long noncoding RNA IL6ST-AS and its anti-sense strand, IL6ST, in α-synuclein-induced microglia, compared with unstimulated microglia. IL6ST is a key component of the IL6R/IL6ST complex in the microglial membrane, which recognizes extracellular inflammatory factors, such as IL6. Studies have shown that the binding of IL6 to the IL6R/IL6ST complex could activate the JAK2-STAT3 pathway and promote an excessive immune response in glia cells. Meanwhile, the phosphorylation and activation of STAT3 could increase the transcription of HIF1A, encoding a hypoxia-inducible factor related to cytotoxic damage. Our results indicated that the overexpression of IL6ST-AS induced by exogenous α-synuclein could inhibit the expression of IL6ST and the activation of JAK2-STAT3 pathway in HMC3 cells. In addition, a reduction in STAT3 resulted in the transcription inhibition of HIF1A and the acceleration of oxidative stress injury in SH-SY5Y cells co-cultured with α-synuclein-induced HMC3 cells. Our findings indicate that IL6ST-AS is an important factor that regulates microglia activation and neuronal necrosis in the progression of PD. In the HMC3 and SH-SY5Y cell co-culture system, the overexpression of IL6ST-AS led to microglial dysfunction and neurotoxicology through the IL6ST-AS/STAT3/HIF-1α axis. Our research revealed the relationships among α-synuclein, IL6ST, STAT3, and HIF-1α in the pathological process of PD and provided a new inflammation hypothesis for the pathogenesis of PD.

One mechanism by which genetic factors influence complex traits and diseases is altering gene expression. Direct measurement of gene expression in relevant tissues is rarely tenable; however, genetically regulated gene expression (GReX) can be estimated using prediction models derived from large multi-omic datasets. These approaches have led to the discovery of many gene-trait associations, but whether models derived from predominantly European ancestry (EA) reference panels can map novel associations in ancestrally diverse populations remains unclear. We applied PrediXcan to impute GReX in 51,520 ancestrally diverse Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) participants (35% African American, 45% Hispanic/Latino, 10% Asian, and 7% Hawaiian) across 25 key cardiometabolic traits and relevant tissues to identify 102 novel associations. We then compared associations in PAGE to those in a random subset of 50,000 White British participants from UK Biobank (UKBB50k) for height and body mass index (BMI). We identified 517 associations across 47 tissues in PAGE but not UKBB50k, demonstrating the importance of diverse samples in identifying trait-associated GReX. We observed that variants used in PrediXcan models were either more or less differentiated across continental-level populations than matched-control variants depending on the specific population reflecting sampling bias. Additionally, variants from identified genes specific to either PAGE or UKBB50k analyses were more ancestrally differentiated than those in genes detected in both analyses, underlining the value of population-specific discoveries. This suggests that while EA-derived transcriptome imputation models can identify new associations in non-EA populations, models derived from closely matched reference panels may yield further insights. Our findings call for more diversity in reference datasets of tissue-specific gene expression.

Mitochondrial and autophagic dysfunction, as well as neuroinflammation, are associated with the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease (PD). Rotenone, an inhibitor of mitochondrial complex I, has been associated as an environmental neurotoxin related to PD. Our previous studies reported that rifampicin inhibited microglia activation and production of proinflammatory mediators induced by rotenone, but the precise mechanism has not been completely elucidated. BV2 cells were pretreated for 2h with rifampicin followed by 0.1μM rotenone, alone or in combination with chloroquine. Here, we demonstrate that rifampicin pretreatment alleviated rotenone induced release of IL-1β and IL-6, and its effects were suppressed when autophagy was inhibited by chloroquine. Moreover, preconditioning with 50μM rifampicin significantly increased viability of SH-SY5Y cells cocultured with rotenone-treated BV2 cells in the transwell coculture system. Chloroquine partially abolished the neuroprotective effects of rifampicin pretreatment. Rifampicin pretreatment significantly reversed rotenone-induced mitochondrial membrane potential reduction and reactive oxygen species accumulation. We suggest that the mechanism for rifampicin-mediated anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects is the enhancement of autophagy. Indeed, the ratio of LC3-II/LC3-I in rifampicin-pretreated BV2 cells was significantly higher than that in cells without pretreatment. Fluorescence and electron microscopy analyses indicate an increase of lysosomes colocalized with mitochondria in cells pretreated with rifampicin, which confirms that the damaged mitochondria were cleared through autophagy (mitophagy). Taken together, the data provide further evidence that rifampicin exerts neuroprotection against rotenone-induced microglia inflammation, partially through the autophagy pathway. Modulation of autophagy by rifampicin is a novel therapeutic strategy for PD.

Circulating white blood cell and platelet traits are clinically linked to various disease outcomes and differ across individuals and ancestry groups. Genetic factors play an important role in determining these traits and many loci have been identified. However, most of these findings were identified in populations of European ancestry (EA), with African Americans (AA), Hispanics/Latinos (HL), and other races/ethnicities being severely underrepresented.

To investigate the clinical manifestations, treatment and prognosis of COVID-19-associated central nervous system (CNS) complications.