Immune actions in the nervous system: A brief review with special emphasis on Aalzheimer's disease

Abstract The traditional dogma of brain immunologic privilege remains entrenched in the neurosciences. Thus the new discipline of neuroimmunology has often been understood as the study of effects of the nervous system on the immune system rather than vice versa. New data, however, are beginning to show potentially important interactions of the immune system in brain, especially in neurologic disease. These neuroimmune mechanisms appear to involve classic peripheral immune cells (e.g., T cells) as well as cells idiosyncratic to brain (e.g., glia).