Interferon-gamma production by peripheral blood leucocytes from patients with multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases.

Peripheral blood leucocyte (PBL) cultures of patients with meningoencephalitis, myasthenia gravis, Alzheimer's dementia, Huntington's chorea as well as patients who were recovering from cerebrovascular accidents or from craniotomy for brain tumours, all had defective interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) responses to stimulation with concanavalin A (Con A) and phytohaemagglutinin (PHA), similar to those already described for PBL cultures of patients with multiple sclerosis. Specifically, cultures from a significant percentage of the patients failed to produce IFN after stimulation with either of the two mitogens. The yields from those cultures that did respond were not significantly lower than those from cultures of healthy blood donors. With increased doses of Con A, the cerebrovascular accident, meningo-encephalitis and MS groups kept their low response frequencies, while the other groups, i.e., myasthenia gravis, Alzheimer's dementia, Huntington's chorea and post-craniotomy, developed an increased response frequency. A good concordance was found between responsiveness to Con A and PHA. With pokeweed mitogen (PWM) as an inducer, no reduction in response frequencies or IFN yields were seen in any of the patient groups. Also, in general, yields were higher with PWM than with Con A.