Proliferative and cytokine responses of peripheral blood mononuclear cells in Lyme-borreliosis patients

Ilyinskikh E.N., Semenov A.G., Ilyinskikh I.N., Cherednikova E.A.

The object of this work was to study the peculiarities of lymphocyte transformation, gamma interferon (IFN-g) and interleukin-4 (IL-4) production in response to live or inactivated Borrelia garinii antigens stimulation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells in patients with different clinical variants of Lyme borreliosis. It was found that borrelia antigen stimulation of mononuclear cells in early and chronic patients induced increased lymphocyte transformation with up-regulated production of IFN-g, but not IL-4, compared to control and convalescent groups. Stimulation of the cultures with live borrelia induced higher concentrations of IFN-g than inactivated borrelia antigen. Significant increases in spontaneous and stimulated lymphocyte transformation and IFN-g production as well as a depression in antigen-stimulated IL-4 production were detected in the cultures obtained from chronic Lyme borreliosis patients, which can point to a significant role of T helper type 1-like response in chronic clinical outcome.