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. 2013 Jan 29:13:40.
doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-13-40.

Posttraumatic stress disorder is associated with an enhanced spontaneous production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by peripheral blood mononuclear cells

Hannah Gola  1 , Harald Engler, Annette Sommershof, Hannah Adenauer, Stephan Kolassa, Manfred Schedlowski, Marcus Groettrup, Thomas Elbert, Iris-Tatjana Kolassa
Affiliations

Posttraumatic stress disorder is associated with an enhanced spontaneous production of pro-inflammatory cytokines by peripheral blood mononuclear cells

Hannah Gola et al. BMC Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with an enhanced risk for cardiovascular and other inflammatory diseases. Chronic low-level inflammation has been suggested as a potential mechanism linking these conditions.

Methods: We investigated plasma cytokine levels as well as spontaneous and lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated cytokine production by peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in a group of 35 severely traumatized PTSD patients compared to 25 healthy controls.

Results: Spontaneous production of interleukin (IL)-1β, IL-6 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α by isolated PBMCs was significantly higher in the PTSD compared to the control group and even correlated with PTSD symptom severity within the PTSD group. In contrast, circulating plasma levels of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, TNF-α, or monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1 were not significantly altered in PTSD patients compared to healthy controls.

Conclusions: Our findings indicate that PBMCs of PTSD patients are already pre-activated in vivo, providing further evidence for low-grade inflammation in PTSD. This might possibly represent one psychobiological pathway from PTSD to poor physical health.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Unstimulated spontaneous and LPS-stimulated IL-1β (A), IL-6 (B), and TNF-α (C) production by PBMCs in PTSD patients compared to controls. The figure shows raw data, jittered horizontally to avoid overlapping points. Horizontal lines indicate means. Statistical significance for the difference in means of immune parameters was assessed by nonparametric permutation tests, using 10 000 random permutations of group labels (* p < .05, ** p < .01, *** p < .001).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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