Abstract
We investigated the production of tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6 and interferon-γ by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection during interferon-α treatment. Studies were undertaken on 12 patients with chronic active hepatitis (CAH), 8 patients with chronic persistent hepatitis (CPH) and 10 healthy controls. Enzyme-linked immunosorvent assay (ELISA) was used to detect each cytokine in the culture media of 24 hours. Phyto-hemagglutinin (PHA) stimurated PBMCs. Before IFN-α treatment, TNF-α production by PBMCs was higher in CAH and CPH patients than that of healthy controls. There was a corelation between serum levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and TNF-α production.
After IFN-α treatment, TNF-α production was significantly increased in both CAH and CPH patients. Before IFN-α treatment, IL-6 production by PBMCs from patients with CAH and CPH was not significantly higher than that of controls. However, production of IL-6 was significantly increased after IFN-α treatment. IFN-γ production by PBMCs was scattered and was not assosiated with CAH, CPH and controls.
After IFN-α treatment, those productions were increased in some patients, but the others were not responded to IFN-α treatment. The nature of these immunostimulatory effects were not fully understood, though these findings suggest that IFN-α treatment may induce some cytokines essential to an antiviral immunoresponse in chronic hepatitis patients with HCV infection.
