Expression of activation, adhesion molecules and intracellular cytokines in acute pancreatitis

Adhesion and activation molecules as well as cytokines play an important ro le in an immune scenario. In acute pancreatitis, we have studied some of th ese in order to evaluate dysregulation. For this we took peripheral blood m ononuclear cells and pancreatitis tissue cells. We analysed activation mark ers like CD69, CD25 and HLA-DR and found a marked elevation of CD69 as well as CD25 in both peripheral blood cells and tissue mononuclear cells when c ompared to controls. In PBMC-CD69: P < 0.01 and CD25: P < 0.01; in tissue-C D69: P < 0.001 and CD25: P < 0.001. The HLA-DR levels, however, were reduce d in the disease state tin acute pancreatitis patient blood (P < 0.01) and tissue cells (P < 0.001). The adhesion molecules showed unanimous rise in t he blood and the tissue samples. Tn blood samples, CD11a: P < 0.05 and CD11 b: P < 0.05 and tissue samples CD11a: P < 0.01 and CD11b: P < 0.01 and CD54 in peripheral blood (P < 0.05) and tissue (P < 0.01) of AP was high as com pared to controls. By simultaneous flowcytometric analysis, we determined t he co-expression of a surface marker (CD4/CD8/CD14) and intracellular cytok ine (TNF-alpha and IFN-gamma) in individual cells. The IFN-gamma producing CDS + T cells were elevated in pancreatic tissue (P < 0.01). TNF-alpha prod ucing cell numbers were significantly higher in tissue cells than in blood and also in CD8 + T cells (P < 0.001). We conclude that monocyte function i s affected in AP as shown by reduced HLA-DR numbers and lowered TNF-alpha. producing cells. Moreover, the CD8 + T cells appear to play an important ro le in cytokine synthesis at the effector site. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved.