Photobiomodulation mitigates LPS-induced astrocyte neuroinflammation via the STAT5A/SOCS3 axis

Neuroinflammation plays an important role in the occurrence and development of neurological diseases. In addition to microglia, the role of astrocytes in neuroinflammation has gradually attracted attention. Photobiomodulation (PBM), as a non-invasive treatment, has been shown potential to alleviate inflammation of microglia or astrocytes. In this study, the spatiotemporal regulation and molecular mechanism of PBM on astrocytes were deeply explored by analyzing the effects and genomics at different time points. The results showed that PBM significantly attenuated the upregulation of inflammatory factors and mitochondrial dysfunction in astrocytes under LPS stimulation for 4[Formula: see text]h and 24[Formula: see text]h. RNA-seq analysis showed that the JAK-STAT pathway played an important role in the early stage of both LPS-induced astrocytic neuroinflammation and PBM-alleviated astrocytic neuroinflammation. Under PBM treatment, Stat5a translocation to the nucleus and upregulated Socs3 expression were observed in LPS-treated astrocytes, which may inhibit the overactivation of the JAK-STAT inflammatory signaling pathway and thus alleviate astrocyte inflammation. Taken together, this study provides new insight into the molecular mechanism of the potential application of PBM in the treatment of neuroinflammation.