Chronic tumour necrosis factor-alpha treatment modifies protein turnover in rat tissues.

Chronic TNF treatment for 8 days resulted in an increased protein turnover in most of the tissues studied. The increased turnover could be observed in both the synthetic and degradation fractional constants; however, in the majority of the tissues (muscle, diaphragm, heart, kidneys, lungs and brown adipose) the increase in Kd was higher than that of Ks resulting thus in a reduced protein accumulation (Ka). In contrast, chronic TNF treatment resulted in an increased brain protein accumulation. The data presented suggest that the cytokine could be involved in tissue wasting in pathological states such as sepsis and malignancy.