Extracellular nucleotides and interleukin-8 production by ARPE cells: potential role of danger signals in blood-retinal barrier activation.

Purpose: RPE cell activation is an important feature of autoimmune uveitis. This investigation focused on whether extracellular nucleotides could contribute to this activation, and the effects of ATPgammaS, UTP, and UDP on the production of IL-8 by RPE cells was studied in relation to their expression of functional P2Y receptors.

Methods: ARPE-19 cells were cultured with ATPgammaS, UTP, UDP, and TNF.