Detection of interferon-gamma and IL-6 producing cells in cerebrospinal fluid cells in the central nervous system infectious diseases using immunocytochemistry]

To evaluate the relationship between cytokines and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) cells, we detected interferon (IFN)-gamma and interleukin (IL)-6 producing cells in CSF from the patients with central nervous system (CNS) infectious diseases by immunocytochemistry. Five CSF cell smears from three herpes encephalitis patients, three from a patient with EB virus radiculoneuritis, four from the three patients with purulent meningitis, five from five patients with viral meningitis were obtained during early or subacute stages of diseases. Control CSF cell smears were taken from twenty seven patients with motor neuron disease, Parkinson's disease and spinocerebellar degeneration. Immunocytochemistry using specific polyclonal anti-IFN-gamma and IL-6 sera were used to detect each producing cell. Simultaneously, individual positively immuno-reactive cells were morphologically classified macrophage or lymphocyte. The IFN-gamma positive cells immunostained with specific antibody showed brown-colored deposits within the cytoplasm whereas no deposit was in the nucleus (Fig. 1). These phenotype of IFN-gamma positive cells were considered to be lymphocytes or macrophages. However, IFN-gamma-positive macrophages were predominantly seen at the early stages of herpes simplex encephalitis and purulent meningitis. The percent of IFN-gamma positive cells in total CSF cells obtained from the patients with the CNS infectious diseases was 2.3-38.7 as shown in Table 1. The IL-6 positive cells (Fig. 2) were also found early in the course and in subacute stages in the CNS infectious diseases and ranged from 2.5-50 percent in total CSF cells (Table 1). In contrast neither IFN-gamma- nor IL-6-positive cells were detected in non-inflammatory diseases (Table 1).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)