Affiliation: | a Department of Microbiology, National Cheng-Kung University Medical College, Tainan City, Taiwan b Department of Physiology, National Cheng-Kung University Medical College, Tainan City, Taiwan c Department of Physiology, National Yang-Ming University Medical College, Taipei, 11221, Taiwan |
Abstract: | Experiments were carried out to determine the changes of natural killer (NK) cell activity that occurred during heatstroke in rats pretreated with or without interleukin-1 (IL-1) receptor antagonist (IL-1ra). After the onset of heatstroke, all the splenic NK cell activity, the effector-target cell conjugation, and the NK cell numbers were decreased in rats. Additionally, an increase in the plasma IL-1 level was associated with arterial hypotension, cerebral ischemia and hyperthermia during rat heatstroke. Pretreatment with an IL-1ra reversed in part the heatstroke-induced inhibition of NK cell activity. Thus it appears that the inhibition of NK cell activity produced by activation of IL-1 receptor mechanism is associated with the increased susceptibility to infection that is well described in heatstroke. |