Products from mast cells influence T lymphocyte proliferation and cytokine production--relevant to allergic asthma?

In IgE allergic diseases both mast cells and T lymphocytes play an important role. Whereas mast cels have been implicated in immediate allergic responses, T lymphocytes mediate subsequent late phase responses and chronic inflammation. Here we review possible links between the early mast cell activation and the later T lymphocyte stimulation. Products from mast cells were found to exert effects on T lymphocytes. Human Mast Cell line-1 (HMC-1) mast cells modulated proliferation and cytokine production of a human CD8+ T-cell clone in vitro. Activated mast cells seemed to drive this CD8+ T-cell clone towards a more pronounced T (helper) 1 type of response, simultaneously decreasing T-cell numbers. It is hypothesized that this might be a negative feed back mechanism operating in allergic subjects, by which the Th2-driven IgE production and eosinophilia are counteracted.

Double staining of intracellular cytokine proteins and T-lymphocyte subsets. Evaluation of the method in blood and bronchoalveolar lavage fluid.

An immunocytochemical staining method has been developed for simultaneous staining of both cell surface markers (CD4 and CD8) and intracellular cytokine proteins IFN-gamma, IL-4 and IL-5. Cell surface molecules were visualized with alkaline phosphatase, which was developed by Fast Blue BB. Intracellular cytokine proteins were detected by amino-ethyl carbazole. We applied this technique to T cells from T-cell lines and T-cell clones, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and broncho-alveolar lavage fluid cells. Cells were used either unstimulated or stimulated for 4 h with 1 ng/ml PMA and 1 microg/ml ionomycin, which proved to be an optimal stimulus taking cytokine staining, cell recovery and cell viability into account. We studied peripheral blood mononuclear cells from healthy subjects and found that without in vitro stimulation on average 0.4% of the cells were IFN-gamma positive cells. In unstimulated broncho-alveolar lavage fluid cells of the 2 allergic asthmatic subjects studied so far we found higher numbers of cytokine-positive cells (up to 22% of the lymphocytes being IL-4+ cells). By in vitro stimulation, the numbers of cytokine-positive peripheral blood mononuclear cells from the healthy subjects were increased to maximally 5% IFN-gamma+ cells. In stimulated lavage fluid cells from allergic asthmatic subjects maximally 34% of the lymphocytes became IFN-gamma+. We conclude that this method allows detection of intracellular cytokine proteins in both CD4+ and CD8+ T cells without the need for stimulating the cells in vitro. In vitro stimulation may change the cytokine profile detected.