Plasma cytokine concentration and the cytokine producing ability of whole blood cell cultures from healthy females with pharmacologically induced hyperprolactinemia

We investigated the in vitro effect of domperidone-induced hyperprolactinem ia on plasma cytokine concentration and blood leukocyte cytokine production in healthy female volunteers. No changes were found in the plasma concentr ation of interferon (IFN)-gamma, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha, interle ukin (IL)-4, IL-10, IL-6 and IL-13 during hyperprolactinemia when compared with control values. Using unseparated blood leukocytes, we found that the spontaneous production of IL-6 (4-8 h) and transforming growth factor (TGF) -beta 1 (2-4 h) was significantly decreased and that the in vitro stimulate d production of IFN-gamma (2-8 h) and TNF (4 h) was significantly increased compared with control. Our data concerning the increased IFN-gamma and TNF producing capacity of unseparated leukocytes during pharmacologically indu ced hyperprolactinemia strongly support the possibility that the lymphocyte production of these cytokines can be rapidly amplified by prolactin via a priming mechanism.