It has been proposed that successful pregnancy is a T helper 2-type phenomenon, and that T helper (Th)1-type reactivity is deleterious to pregnancy. The objective of this study was to compare the concentrations of Th1 and Th2 cytokines produced by peripheral blood mononuclear cells from women undergoing unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) with those produced during normal pregnancy at a similar gestational stage. The control group consisted of 24 women with a history of successful pregnancies and the abortion group comprised of 23 women with a history of unexplained RSA. Blood from the control group was obtained at the end of the first trimester as gestational age controls for the abortion group from whom blood was collected at the time of abortion. Phytohaemagglutinin-stimulated peripheral blood cell culture supernatants were analysed for concentrations of cytokines. Significantly higher concentrations of Th2 cytokines were produced by the first trimester normal group than by the RSA group, while significantly higher concentrations of Th1 cytokines were produced by the abortion group as compared to first trimester normal pregnancy, indicating a distinct Th2-bias in normal pregnancy and a Th1-bias in unexplained RSA.
We conclude that abortion-prone women who proceed to have successful pregnancy are more Th2-biased than abortion-prone women who abort, and that recurrent aborters who undergo spontaneous abortion have a stronger Th1 bias than aborters who have normal pregnancy.
Levels of IL-8 and the ratios of IL-6/IL-10 and IL-8/IL-10 have the potential to be indicators of pulpal inflammation in caries exposure cases. Cytokine estimation in pulpal blood may help in the diagnosis of pulpal inflammation.
Dengue virus causes dengue fever, a mild febrile illness, and at times dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF), a severe illness the pathogenesis of which is not fully understood. Given the crucial roles played by interleukin-8 (IL-8) as a chemoattractant cytokine and in inflammatory processes, levels of circulating IL-8 in the sera and IL-8 mRNA in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were measured in 99 patients of a recent dengue epidemic that occurred in India in 1996 and in 21 normal healthy controls. Twenty-six of the patients had dengue fever (DF) and the remaining 73 were diagnosed as having different grades of DHF. All the control normal sera were negative for IL-8, so were their PBMC for IL-8 mRNA. Increased levels of IL-8 in the sera and IL-8 mRNA in their PBMC were observed in patients with severe illness of DHF grades III and IV. Only two out of 26 patients of DF and one out of 10 DHF grade I patient were positive for IL-8 and all three deteriorated to DHF grade IV within 24 hr. All six patients of DHF grade IV who died had higher serum level of IL-8 above 200 pg/ml, the highest being 5,568 pg/ml in one patient; the presence of mRNA for IL-8 was very high in all patients. A striking correlation was observed between increased levels of IL-8 and severe DHF, with greater levels in patients with increased grade of the disease and death. These results suggest that IL-8 may have an important role and may be an indicator of increasing severity of the disease and death.
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