MOTRICH RUBEN DARIO
Congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines associate with an autoimmune cell response against prostate antigens in chronic prostatitis NIH III
Autor/es:
MOTRICH, RD; MOLINA, R; TISSERA, A; OLMEDO, JJ; MINUZZI, G; RIERA, CM; MACCIONI, M; RIVERO, VE
Lugar:
Montreal, Canada
Reunión:
Congreso; 12th International Congress of Immunology and 4th Annual Conference of FOCIS; 2004
Resumen:
Chronic prostatitis is the most common urologic diagnosis in men younger than 50 years old. NIH has proposed a classification which includes infectious chronic prostatitis (NHI II) and non infectious chronic prostatitis (NHI III). Despite years of investigations the cause of NHI III remains unclear, and many hypotheses have been proposed to explain it, such as difficult to culture microorganisms, psychological causes, autoimmunity, etc.
In the present study we analyzed the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) proliferative response (PR) to prostate antigens (PA): Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA), Prostatic Acid Phosphatase (PAP), Seminal Plasma (SP) and Prostate Extract (PE), and, in paralell, we also analyzed the seminal levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNFa and IL-1b), in patients with chronic prostatitis and in a control group. Patients and healthy individuals were divided in 4 groups. Healthy control group (Group III, n=10), patients classified as NHI II (Group I, n=15) and patients classified as NHI III divided according to the results of the prostate specific proliferation assay in Group IIA, n=10, and Group IIB, n=19 with positive or negative PBMC PR to PA respectively.
We found that neither the PBMC from normal individuals of group III nor PBMC from patients from group I showed positive PR against any of the PA tested. Patients from group IIA showed positive PR against most of the antigens examined, being PSA and PAP the most frequent recognized antigens. Patients from group IIB showed a negative PR to PA. In the analysis of the levels of TNFa and IL-1b in semen, we surprisingly found that only patients of group IIA showed significant elevated levels of these cytokines in semen, arguing for a severe and local inflammation in the prostate gland, of non infectious cause, in these patients.
We have found both, autoimmune cell response to PA and elevated levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines in semen in a set of patients with prostatitis NIH III. We speculate that an autoimmune response to prostate antigens could create an inflammatory environment affecting the prostate gland, responsible for the clinical symptoms present in these patients.
