Cerebrospinal fluid from patients with neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory diseases: no evidence for rat glial activation in vitro

To determine the possible contribution of glial cells via oxidative stress/ cytokine secretion in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD), Alzheim er disease (AD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or multiple sclerosis (MS) the concentration of nitric oxide (NO) (by the Griess method) and Inte rleukin-6 (IL-6) (by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) were measured in re sting rat microglial and astrocytic cell culture supernatants stimulated by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) (dilution 1:4, 1:10) from patients with the afor ementioned diseases. Neither the concentration of NO (optical density at 45 0 nm: control, 0.036 +/- 0.006; MS, 0.034 +/- 0.008; AD, 0.031 +/- 0.006; P D, 0.02 +/- 0.01; lipopolysaccharide (LPS), 0.26 +/- 0.018) nor the amount of IL-6 (ng/ml: control, 0.112 +/- 0.026; PD, 0.12 +/- 0.027; MS, 0.123 +/- 0.008; ALS, 0.137 +/- 0.01; LPS, 1.81 +/- 0.11) differed in any disease gr oup from those of unaffected controls. These findings suggest that the stim uli for inflammatory activation of glia are quite localized and not present in sufficient concentrations in the CSF of affected patients. (C) 2001 Els evier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.