Objective: We investigated both human and murine peripheral blood mononuclear cells to find which of the anti-glaucoma drugs used to lower intraocular pressure drug also suppresses inflammation.
Subjects & methods: Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) prepared from healthy men and from BALB/c mice were suspended in RPMI 1640 culture medium containing 10% FBS. Each test drug was added to the cells, and they were cultured in a CO2 incubator (set to 37 degrees C and 5% CO2) for 30 minutes. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) was added to the same cells and they were cultured again for a given period of time, after which either tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) or interleukin-6 (IL-6) levels in the culture medium were determined by ELISA.
Results: Carteolol inhibited production of both TNF-alpha and IL-6 from PBMCs. The other test agents had no inhibitory effect. The carbonic anhydrase inhibitor (CAI) dorzolamide, isopropyl unoprostone and latanoprost had almost no effect on the production of inflammatory cytokines.
Conclusions: We demonstrated that carteolol exhibits an inhibitory action on the production of inflammatory cytokines from PBMCs because of its intrinsic sympathomimetic action. We also showed that CAI and PG drugs had almost no effect on inflammatory cytokine production.