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

Adhesion and activation molecules as well as cytokines play an important role in an immune scenario. In acute pancreatitis, we have studied some of these in order to evaluate dysregulation. For this we took peripheral blood mononuclear cells and pancreatitis tissue cells. We analysed activation markers 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 compared to controls. In PBMC-CD69: P<0.01 and CD25: P<0.01; in tissue-CD69: P<0.001 and CD25: P<0.001. The HLA-DR levels, however, were reduced in the disease state (in acute pancreatitis patient blood (P<0.01) and tissue cells (P<0.001)). The adhesion molecules showed unanimous rise in the blood and the tissue samples. In blood samples, CD11a: P<0.05 and CD11b: P<0.05 and tissue samples CD11a: P<0.01 and CD11b: P<0.01and CD54 in peripheral blood (P<0.05) and tissue (P<0.01) of AP was high as compared to controls. By simultaneous flowcytometric analysis, we determined the co-expression of a surface marker (CD4/CD8/CD14) and intracellular cytokine (TNF-alpha and IFN-gamma) in individual cells. The IFN-gamma producing CD8+T cells were elevated in pancreatic tissue (P<0.01). TNF-alpha producing 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 is 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 role in cytokine synthesis at the effector site.