Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2021 May 17;11:80. doi: 10.1186/s13613-021-00869-7

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2021

Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Fig. 3 — Illustration of the inflammatory reflex (here, in the spleen). Efferent signals from the brain stem travel through the efferent vagus nerve to the celiac plexus, which also receives input from the sympathetic branch. The catecholaminergic splenic nerve arises in this celiac plexus and projects inside the spleen, where its terminal fibers reach T and B lymphocytes. Efferent signals in the vagus nerve activate the splenic nerve, which releases norepinephrine in the spleen, activating the choline acetyltransferase‐expressing T-lymphocytes (ChAT) through their adrenergic receptors (AR). ChAT then release acetylcholine (ACh), which acts on α7 subunits (α7) of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor on macrophages (M_Φ), suppressing further release of tumor necrosis factors (TNF). Activation of the splenic nerve also stops B‐lymphocyte migration and inhibits their antibody production. Adapted from [111]