Temporary appearance of a circulating granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor in lethal murine malaria.

Infection of mice with Plasmodium berghei engendered a temporary appearance of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) in the serum. The peak of GM-CSF levels was detected at day 2 post-infection, and then gradually decreased. On the other hand, the number of committed stem cells for granulocytes and macrophages (CFU-GM) in bone marrow transiently decreased at day 2 post-infection, and then increased and peaked at day 6 post-infection. When the serum of P. berghei-infected mice was fractionated by gel chromatography on Sephacryl S-300, GM-CSF activity was detected as a single peak with an apparent molecular weight of 64 KDa. GM-CSF was entirely adsorbed to concanavalin A-Sepharose 4B affinity chromatography, and was sensitive to pronase digestion, indicating its glycoprotein nature. These results suggest that the circulating GM-CSF would contribute the increase of granulocyte-macrophage hemopoiesis in the early phase of malaria.