Abstract
Important roles of reactive oxygen species (ROS) to microbicidal functions of neutrophils are well recognized. Recently, chemiluminescent techniques, that have been used in research fields of oxygen radicals, are becoming to be much easier by technological advancements in this decade. Many investigators have reported using chemiluminescent techniques the ROS generation from phagocytes. But unfortunately, methods to evaluate the ROS generating ability of neutrophils from chemiluminescent measurements have not been well established yet.
In this study, to establish a new estimation method for the neutrophil activity, a kinetic approach is proposed and parameters of reported estimation methods are reconsidered by comparison with an obtained ideal equation by the kinetic approach.
Applications of the ideal equation to actually measured values using Zymosan, E. coli, andS. aureus as particles showed good concurrences. By the comparison between reported esitmation methods and the obtained ideal equation, following results are observed. 1) Initial slopes (tanΘ) of a slope method may have a possibility to estimate a neutrophil activating constant, ka, of the ideal equation. 2) Peak heights of a peak method and under curve areas of a area method are linearly correlated with a statistical significance. But limitations of the area method to estimate the neutrophil activity are revealed by the ideal equation. 3) For the peak method, it is possible to estimate the neutrophil activity, if both parameters of the peask method, peak heights and peak time, are well considered.
The results of this study contribute much to the extension of knowledge of the neutrophil chemiluminescence.
