Chronic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) exposure to mice reduces the lymphoid compartment and skews the hematopoietic cell compartment toward myeloid-cells, which is considered to be a direct effect of LPS on hematopoietic stem cells. However, the effect of chronic LPS exposure on stromal-cells, which compose the hematopoietic microenvironment, has not been elucidated. Here, we investigated early-and late-phase effects of repeated LPS exposure on stromal-cells. During the early phase, when mice were

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... eated with 5 or 25 µg LPS three times at weekly intervals, the numbers of myeloid-progenitor (colony forming unit-granulocyte macrophage (CFU-GM)) cells and B lymphoid-progenitor (CFU-preB) cells in the bone-marrow (BM) rapidly decreased after each treatment. The number of CFU-GM cells recovered from the initial decrease and then increased to levels higher than pretreatment levels, whereas the number of CFU-preB cells remained lower than pretreatment levels. In the BM, expression of genes for positive-regulators of myelopoiesis including granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), and interleukin (IL)-6 and negative-regulators of B lymphopoiesis including tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α was up-regulated, whereas expression of positive-regulators of B lymphopoiesis including stromal cell-derived factor (SDF)-1, IL-7, and stem cell factor (SCF) was down-regulated. During the late phase, the number of CFU-preB cells remained lower than pretreatment levels 70 d after the first treatments with 5 and 25 µg LPS, whereas the number of CFU-GM cells returned to pretreatment levels. IL-7 gene expression in the BM remained down-regulated, whereas gene-expression levels of SDF-1 and SCF were restored. Thus, chronic LPS exposure may impair stromal-cell function, resulting in prolonged suppression of B lymphopoiesis, which may appear to be senescence similar to the hematological phenotype.