Interleukin 15 activity in the rectal mucosa of inflammatory bowel disease

Overexpression of IL-15 In Vivo Enhances Tc1 Response, Which Inhibits Allergic Inflammation in a Murine Model of Asthma

“…Thus, IL-15 may influence both Th1 and Th2 cells. Aberrant IL-15 expression was observed in patients with inflammatory autoimmune disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis (18,19) and inflammatory bowel diseases (20,21), suggesting that IL-15 is involved in the pathogenesis of inflammatory disease. However, the potential role of IL-15 in allergic responses in vivo remains to be elucidated.…”

Interleukin-2 Receptor β Subunit-dependent and -independent Regulation of Intestinal Epithelial Tight Junctions

“…However, the expression of the IL-15R␣ subunit in a wide variety of different tissues suggests that the functional role of IL-15 is not limited to the regulation of lymphoid cells (30). Recently IL-15 has been recognized as a cytokine up-regulated during inflammatory bowel disease as well as during the colitis in IL-2-deficient mice (31)(32)(33). Nevertheless, it is not clear whether IL-15 contributes to the perpetuation of inflammation or the regulation of intestinal tissue repair.…”

“…In inflammatory bowel disease, elevated IL-15 expression derived from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, intestinal macrophages, or intestinal epithelial cells has been associated with disease stages (31,32,69). Furthermore, IL-15 mRNA is expressed at high levels in normal and diseased mouse intestine (70) and up-regulated during intestinal inflammation in IL-2-deficient mice.…”

Endogenous IL-15 might be responsible for early protection by natural killer cells against infection with an avirulent strain of Salmonella choleraesuis in mice

“…Because IL-15 expression is regulated not only at the transcriptional level but also at the posttranslation level [6][7][8][9][10][11][12], IL-15 protein is found to be produced only by activated monocyte/macrophage and epithelial cells, but not by T cells and other cells [1,2,6]. Although there have been several lines of evidence for involvement of IL-15 in infection with avirulent Salmonella choleraesuis cured of 50-kb virulent plasmid [13], Mycobacterium tuberculosis [14,15], human immunodeficiency virus [16], Toxoplasma gondii [17], and hepatitis C virus [18], and in autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis [19] and inflammatory bowel diseases [20], it remains to be elucidated how IL-15 functioned in host defense against microbial infection.…”