Several studies suggest a role for IL-6 in the pathogenesis of uveitis. Earlier we have shown that aqueous humour obtained from patients with uveitis contained raised levels of IL-6. In the study described here we investigated the IL-6 levels in vitreous fluid samples obtained from 75 uveitis patients with different uveitis entities. Vitreous samples from 14 patients with proliferative intraocular disorders (PID) and 29 eye bank eyes were used as controls. All the samples were tested in the IL-6 B9 bioassay as well as in a sensitive ELISA for IL-6.Raised IL-6 levels were detected in the vitreous fluid of uveitis patients as well as patients with PID, implicating IL-6 as a common inflammatory mediator. The highest mean level of IL-6 was found in the vitreous fluid of patients with acute retinal necrosis. The mean IL-6 levels measured by the ELISA were higher compared to the levels measured by the B9 bioassay. This may be caused by the presence of B9 bioassay inhibitory factors in the vitreous fluid of these patients.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Interphotoreceptor retinoid binding protein (IRBP) is a 136,000 molecular weight photoreceptor cell protein capable of inducing an experimental autoimmune uveitis (EAU) in susceptible animal strains. The occurrence of serum antibodies against human (Hu) or bovine (Bo) IRBP was investigated in patients with uveitis and healthy controls. A sensitive ELISA detected anti-IRBP in approximately 50% of patients and controls, without apparent differences in the mean level, titre or avidity and irrespective of the origin of the antigen. Although the correlation (p less than 0.001) between anti-HuIRBP and anti-BoIRBP levels in uveitis sera suggested the presence of crossreacting antibodies, these sera also contained antibodies specific for either the human or the bovine antigen. The only difference between patients and controls was the greater ability of antibodies in uveitis sera (p less than 0.05) to recognize a synthetic peptide of HuIRBP, which induces severe EAU in rats. We conclude that autoantibodies to IRBP occur naturally in man and are not increased in patients with uveitis.