Acute and late administration of colony stimulating factor 1 attenuates chronic cognitive impairment following mild traumatic brain injury in mice

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of long-term neurological disability. Currently there is no effective pharmacological treatment for patients suffering from the long-lasting symptoms of TBI. We recently discovered that colony stimulating factor 1 (CSF1), an essential regulator of macrophage homeostasis, is neuroprotective and reduces neuroinflammation in two models of neurological disease in mice. Here we used a mouse model of repetitive mild TBI (mTBI) to examine whether CSF1 would attenuate cognitive deficits and improve pathological outcomes in two paradigms. In the acute paradigm, a single bolus treatment of CSF1 administered 24 h after injury significantly reduces memory impairment and astrocyte reactivity assessed 3 months later. In the chronic paradigm, the mice were tested 3 months after mTBI when they showed cognitive deficits. The mice were then randomly assigned to receive CSF1 or PBS (as control) treatment. After one month of treatment, the PBS-treated mice remained cognitively impaired, but the CSF1-treated showed significant improvements in cognitive function. RNA-seq and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis reveals CSF1 treatment alters cognition- and memory-related transcriptomic changes and pathways. The results of this study show that acute as well as delayed CSF1 treatment attenuate chronically impaired cognitive functions and improve pathological outcomes long after mTBI. The wide therapeutic time window of CSF1, together with the fact that CSF1 is approved for human use in clinical trials, strongly supports the potential clinical usefulness of this treatment in patients with mTBI.