“Neuroimmunoendocrinology” in Children with Rheumatic Diseases: How Glucocorticoids Are the Orchestra Director

Abstract

The neural, the endocrine, and the immune systems are studied as distinct districts in physiological and pathological settings. However, these systems must be investigated with an integrative approach, while also considering that therapeutic agents, such as glucocorticoids, can induce a reversible or irreversible change of this homeostasis. Children and adolescents affected by rheumatic diseases frequently need treatment with corticosteroids, and the treatment must sometimes be continued for a long time. In the biological era, the treat-to-target strategy allowed a real revolution in treatment, with significant steroid dose sparing or, in many patients, steroid treatment withdrawal. In this review, the impact of glucocorticoids on endocrine, immune, and neurologic targets is analyzed, and the crosstalk between these systems is highlighted. In this narrative review, we explore the reasoning as to why glucocorticoids can disrupt this homeostasis, we summarize some of the key results supporting the impact of glucocorticoids treatment on endocrine, immune, and neurologic systems, and we discuss the data reported in the international literature.

A Subset of Colon Cancer Cell Lines Displays a Cytokine Profile Linked to Angiogenesis, EMT and Invasion Which Is Modulated by the Culture Conditions In Vitro

“…Besides identifying individual signaling cascades, an in-depth investigation of the main regulators of the secretome expression and their interaction becomes essential. Within the secretome, cytokines play an important role, as they also interact with non-cancerous cells and as a link between different organ systems [5]. Cancer cells do not induce dysregulated cytokine secretion alone, but rather create a bi-directional tumor-stroma signaling in the tumor microenvironment (TME) [6,7].…”