Quantitation of macrophage activation

Chemoluminescence is a sensitive and relatively easy method to quantitate macrophage activation. Cytotoxic assay as measured by 51Cr release from tumour target cells is more involved and less sensitive. Our experiments indicate that, depending on the mode of activation, different effector mechanisms are operational. Thus, macrophages activated with double stranded yeast RNA show good chemoluminescence but no cytotoxic response while thioglycollate activated macrophages show the reverse response.