NOTES Production of Monocyte Chemoattractant Protein 1 in Tuberculosis Patients

To investigate the role of monocyte chemoattractant protein 1 (MCP-1) in the immune response to Myco-bacterium tuberculosis, we studied MCP-1 production in tuberculosis patients. CD141 blood monocytes from tuberculosis patients spontaneously expressed higher levels of MCP-1 mRNA and protein than CD141 mono-cytes from healthy tuberculin reactors. MCP-1 production in lymph nodes from tuberculosis patients was also markedly increased. These findings suggest that MCP-1 can contribute to the antimycobacterial inflammatory response by attracting monocytes and T lymphocytes. During the immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, T cells and macrophages are recruited to the site of infection, resulting in tissue inflammation and granuloma for-mation. The mechanism for recruitment of these cells is likely to involve chemokines, which are a large family of proteins that include chemoattractants for neutrophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes. Among the chemokines, monocyte chemoattrac-tant protein 1 (MCP-1) is likely to play an important role in the pathogenesis of tuberculosis because it is a chemoattractant fo