Alternative activation of macrophage by IL-10

Macrophage activation by proinflammatory stimuli is suppressed by IL-10. We tested the hypothesis that IL-10 induces an alternative state of macrophage activation rather than solely mediating suppression. We therefore searched for genes the expression of which might be up-rather than downregulated in response to IL-10. Total RNA was obtained from mouse macrophages J774 A.1 before or after stimulation with IL-10 (20 ng/ml). Poly(A)+RNA was isolated in both cases in order to obtain driver and tester mRNA. Subtraction suppression hybridization was performed using the PCR-select cDNA subtraction procedure. After evaluation of the subtraction efficiency the subtracted cDNA library was cloned into pCRII.1. A total of 1,300 clones were obtained. Southern blot hybridization analysis was performed as the first screening step of this total number of clones. 140 (10.7%) were identified as upregulated in response to IL-10. Sequence analyses so far showed perfect or near perfect matches with already known genes for the majority of clones. Our results clearly indicate that IL-10 stimulates the expression of a large number of genes in macrophages. We conclude that IL-10 induces in macrophages a noninflammatory state of reactivity which may serve to contain proinflammatory conditions.