Techniques for quantification of cytokine mRNAs.

Various methods are currently used to monitor cytokine mRNA expression levels in clinical samples. In instances where sample size is limited (e.g. biopsies), amplification procedures such as reverse transcription followed by polymerase chain reaction amplification appear to be the only ones that are currently useful. This paper provides a review of such techniques for the detection and quantitation of cytokine message in clinical samples, and compares semiquantitative and competitive techniques in terms of sensitivity, reproducibility, feasibility and costs.