2008 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 50-57
Low back pain and associated spinal diseases are significant problem. Disc degeneration is believed to be one of the causes of low back pain, but patho-mechanisms are unknown. Recent report showed that the disc is an immune-privileged organ and Fas ligand expression may play important roles to maintain the immune privilege. It has been demonstrated that the expression of the Fas ligand is decreased in degenerated discs. On the other hands, symptoms associated with disc herniation are partially due to the production of the inflammatory mediators. The phenomenon of disc herniation can be recognized as a situation that an immune-privileged tissue is suddenly exposed to the host immune system. Therefore, we conducted the interaction of macrophage and the disc tissue and co-culture of them resulted in a stimulation of the IL-6 production. These observations indicate that the deep relationship between immune privilege of the disc and low back pain.
