2003 Volume 13 Issue 2 Pages 31-38
A cross-talk among a variety of cytokines in local lesions is suspected to play a significant role in the development and healing of the lesions including pleural effusion. A new flow cytometric technique, cytometric beads array (CBA), is a tool to simultaneously measure not only absolute abundance of various cytokines but also their relative abundance in a small amount of liquid sample. Therefore CBA is expected to be a very useful method to provide information for understanding a feedback mechanism of cytokines regulating synthesis and / or secretion of each other in local lesions. The present article reviews this technique and our study using a commercially available CBA kit and pleural effusion obtained from the patients in National Sanyo Hospital.
