Total radical-trapping antioxidative capacity of plasma and whole blood chemiluminescence in patients with inflammatory and autoimmune rheumatic diseases.

The total radical-trapping antioxidative capacity (TRAC) of plasma was evaluated in samples from patients suffering from various inflammatory and autoimmune rheumatic diseases (n=104) and correlated with the phorbol ester-stimulated chemiluminescence (CL) of neutrophils and monocytes in unseparated blood. Plasma and blood samples from age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers (n=25) and from patients with non-rheumatic internal diseases (n=31) served as controls. A 2 to 10 fold increase in whole blood chemiluminescence was found in rheumatic patients, which paralleled 50-80% decreased levels of plasma TRAC-values. While significant correlations between CL and TRAC were determined for patients with inflammatory arthritic diseases no correlations were found with patients suffering from connective tissue diseases. Prednisolone treatment of individual patients increased plasma TRAC-values substantially and decreased elevated levels of phagocytic CL generation to that of healthy controls. The main potential application of the assays described here is for the convenient assessment of disease activity and progression in individual patients with rheumatic diseases.