[Immunomodulator effects of 2 kinds of interferon alpha on the in vitro synthesis of systemic and articular interleukin 1 in rheumatoid polyarthritis].

The authors have studied the synthesis of interleukin 1 by articular and circulating macrophages and the effect of two types of interferon alpha (IF) on this synthesis in 20 patients with untreated rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The articular and especially systemic interleukin levels in the RA patients are significantly higher than those of the test subjects. Interferon modifies in a very different way the production of interleukin 1 in the patients and in the test subjects.

[Experimental study of the inducing action of streptococcal pathogenic factors on immunity and cellular autoimmunity].

Rabbits issued from a closed colony which was genetically homogenous were used to investigate the capacity of streptolysin O and streptococcal M-protein to induce both cellular immune and autoimmune responses with respect to autologous cardiac tissue. The presence of immune response was indicated by positive responses of two tests of cellular immunity: blastogenesis of splenic T lymphocytes and inhibition of splenic macrophage migration. By thing into account that a nonspecific direct effect is produced by certain components of the streptococcal cell wall (lipoteichoic acid) but not by streptolysin O or M-protein on splenic lymphocytes, and according to the data on the modifications of lymphocyte populations during the autoimmune processes, it was possible to presume that anti-cardiac autoimmunity was as much due to a modification of cardiac tissue towards "non-self" status caused by experimental inductive factors as to he presence of a functional imbalance of the immunomodulatory lymphocyte system due to a predominance of auxiliary T lymphocytes.