Effect of medicinal leeches' antigens on the proliferative response of human blood mononuclear cells and cytokine production in vitro.

UNLABELLED: The purpose of research is to study the influence of plant mitogens and antigens of the water-salt extract from the bodies of Hirudo verbana, H. medicinalis, H. orientalis on the reaction of lymphocyte blast-transformation and the synthesis of pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1ß, IL-8, TNF-α) in patients' cell culture supernatants before and after hirudotherapy. RESEARCH METHODS: the reaction of lymphocyte blast-transformation; the determination of proinflammatory cytokines by ELISA. After hirudotherapy increased values of the reaction of lymphocyte blasttransformation have got bigger in all stimulated types of cell culture, but reactivity on medicinal leeches antigens proceeded to unproductive immunogenesis (apoptosis and necrosis). In supernatants of mitogen- and antigen-stimulated lymphocyte cultures induced high levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines after hirudotherapy have decreased adequately to apoptotic induction of lymphocytes by medicinal leeches' antigens.

Basic morphofunctional features of pharmaceutic leech (Hirudo verbana Carena, 1820) tissues in various forms of response after hirudotherapeutic procedures.

It is analyzed morphofunctional features of Hirudo verbana tissues on histological sections in order to determine the possible causes of their partial death after hirudotherapeutic procedure. In the study was taken 4 groups of leeches: hungry (control), healthy well-fed, well-fed that vomited blood and well-fed dead. Morphofunctional changes in midgut of healthy well-fed H. verbana compared to the hungry are the changes of epithelium height through stretching eaten blood. In well-fed that vomited blood and well-fed dead leeches in the intestinal epithelium were observed degenerative processes that are accompanied by a decrease in the height of the epithelium, its partial desquamation. Botryoidal tissue of hungry leeches is in an inactive state, in healthy well-fed ones it responds with an increased physiological vascularization, activation of some botryoidal granulocytes with an increase in their average size, on receipt of the products of digestion. Activation of some botryoidal granulocytes, without a significant increase in their sizes, in well-fed leeches that vomited eaten blood and well-fed dead leeches, with increased infiltration of the adjacent connective tissue lymphocyte- and macrophage-like cells, amebocytes and granulocytes indicates the development of pathological processes, which are resulting in immunological conflict between eaten human blood and leeches' tissue microenvironment.