The importance of inflammation’s role in many neurologic disease pathogenesis has increased rapidly in recent years. Neuroinflammation has been viewed as the most common phenomenon observed in the disorders of the central nervous system, either in the acute insult like infection, trauma, and stroke or in chronic neurodegenerative states like Alsheimer’s disease, Parkinson’ disease and multiple sclerosis. This “neuroinflammation hypothesis” further challenged the attempts to expand our understanding of neuronal injury and neurodegeneration due to the activation of the brain cells to stress and insult, and targeting neuroinflammation and the major elements of the inflammatory response has become the most effective neuroprotective strategies. Initially introduced as a replacement therapy intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) is now widely used for the treatment of a number of autoimmune and systemic inflammatory diseases. Besides these medical conditions, evidence suggests that many other conditions, such as inflammatory disorders with an imbalance in the cytokine network could benefit from immunoglobulin treatment. In this review we would explain the neuroprotective effects of intravenous immunoglobulin mechanisms and the last study we have performed. We recently demonstrated that administration of IVIG to septic rats reduced the amount of BBB (blood-brain barrier) damage and eliminated mortality. We think that the neuroprotective action of IVIG in animal models of different neuroinflammatory injury like stroke, trauma and sepsis suggests a therapeutic potential that merits consideration for clinical trials in patients.

Keywords: Neuroprotection, sepsis, immunoglobulin