From Space to the Patient: A New Cytokine Release Assay to Monitor the Immune Status of HIV Infected Patients and Sepsis Patients

Monitoring of humans either in the healthy men under extreme environmental stress like space flight, in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected patients or in sepsis is of critical importance with regard to the timing of adequate therapeutic (counter-)measures. The in vivo skin delayed-type hypersensitivity test (DTH) served for many years as a tool to evaluate cell mediated immunity. However, this standardised in vivo test was removed from the market in 2002 due to the risk of antigen stabilization. To the best of our knowledge an alternative test as monitoring tool to determine cell mediated immunity is not available so far. For this purpose we tested a new alternative assay using elements of the skin DTH which is based on an ex vivo cytokine release from whole blood and asked if it is suitable and applicable to monitor immune changes in HIV infected patients and in patients with septic shock.