Vagotomy attenuates the behavioural but not the pyrogenic effects of interleukin-1 in rats

Vagal afferent signals, have been implicated in cytokine mediated interactions between the periphery and the central nervous system. Studies in experimental animals have shown that cytokine induced activation of brain mediated responses to infection such as fever, sickness behaviour and pituitary-adrenal activation, are inhibited by subdiaphragmatic vagotomy. We have previously proposed that the peripheral signal to the brain in fever is of a humoral nature while others have suggested that either neural afferents or a mixture of both humoral and neural signals may be involved. The objective of the present study was to examine further the role of vagal transmission, in mediating the febrile response to a systemic injection of IL-1β in rats and to compare this with changes in social exploration behaviour. Intraperitoneal injection of IL-1β (1.0–30.0 μg/kg) inhibited social exploration in rats and this was attenuated in vagotomized animals. Injection of increasing concentrations of IL-1β (0.1–1.0 μg/rat) induced significant (P<0.001) increases in core body temperature. However, in contrast to effects on social exploration, the increase in temperature was not inhibited by vagotomy at any of the doses used. These observations demonstrate a dissociation between the two brain mediated events, one of which is dependent on the integrity of the vagus nerve (social exploration) while the other (fever) is apparently generated by different mechanisms which may include circulating pyrogens.