Grant: Team Grant: Health Challenges in Chronic Inflammation Initiative (LOI)

Chronic inflammatory diseases of the gut and liver share many common features. Amongst these are changes in the brain that lead to behavioral symptoms which cause a markedly diminished quality of life for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians living with these conditions. The mechanisms of brain dysfunction remain to be fully understood and the consequences of altered brain function have not been explored with a bench to bedside focus. To understand how persistent inflammation in the body may be causal for disturbances in the brain, we will test the hypothesis that chronic immune-mediated inflammatory disease reprograms the brain to alter neuronal function, causing associated behavioral dysfunction, which in turn influences the disease processes themselves. We can test this hypothesis because we have assembled a unique research team with basic scientific and patient centered expertise in the management of chronic inflammatory disease matched with neuroscientists, psychiatrists and imaging experts who are fluent in the understanding of brain-body communication and plasticity of brain function. With this approach we will facilitate the discovery of common central mechanisms underlying the neurologic and psychologic conditions of chronic inflammation and then translate these discoveries towards improved patient outcomes.