Measurement of Cytokines in Cerebrospinal Fluid

Cytokines, low-molecular-weight glycoproteins with diverse bioactivities, are produced from local tissues and leukocytes in response to various stimuli and are involved in both physiologic and pathologic events. Cerebrospinal fluid is an informative material used to evaluate cytokine activities associated with a variety of conditions in the central nervous system. Although each cytokine has been well characterized physiochemically, cerebrospinal fluid contains many bioactive substances including cytokines. In addition, it is well known that cytokines show pleiotropy and redundancy. For these reasons, biologic assay of each cytokine in crude fluid is thought to be complex, laborious, time consuming, and inaccurate.