The investigation of cytokines and oxidative stress in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Abstract

Numerous factors can influence the onset of SLE and development of some clinical disease manifestations with various organ involvements and occurrence of characteristic symptoms and disease signs. This paper studies the balance between proinflammatory and antiinflammatory cytokines, investigates the presence of oxidative stress measuring certain prooxidative factors and determines the activation of antioxidative protection pathways aiming to establish possible correlations between the studied parameters. ELISA, enzymatic spectrophotometry and colorimetric methods were used to determine the above-mentioned parameters. The results obtained indicate that disturbed pro/antioxidative status is associated with the change of antioxidative factors, with the fall od SOD activity and increase of GPx and CAT activity in the erythrocytes of all studied groups of patients. At the same time, the cytokine production was altered, not only compared to the healthy control samples, but also in various clinical disease manifestations. Altered relationships of pro and antiinflammatory cytokines and the consequential disorders of other studied systems provide us with useful strategic targets for diagnostic monitoring and possible therapeutic interventions in SLE patients.