3–5,44 Hence, the diurnal suppression of Tres cytokine secretion by nTreg might, in part, be driven by the cellular circadian clock of nTreg via yet-unknown pathways. Therefore, the analysis of the circadian selleckchem clock in T cells should be addressed in future studies. Besides the cellular circadian clock, the hormonal priming of T cells in vivo could be another mechanism

for the diurnal rhythm of cytokine secretion by Tres.13 To investigate this possible mechanism we analyzed the hormone levels from all subjects and performed a multiple linear regression analysis. We found a negative correlation between cortisol serum levels and T-cell cytokine secretion. Furthermore, we demonstrated in vitro that a 2 hr pre-incubation with physiological daytime levels of cortisol decreased cytokine secretion. This MLN2238 solubility dmso is in line with in vitro data published by other investigators demonstrating an immunosuppressive effect of cortisol.8,26,30,45–47 A positive correlation

was found between melatonin and prolactin serum levels and T-cell cytokine secretion. Whereas we could show in vitro that pre-incubation of Tres with prolactin increased the secretion of IL-10 but decreased that of IL-2 by Tres, we were unable to demonstrate this effect for melatonin. Prolactin was described to display immune-stimulatory functions in vitro, whereas conflicting data are published for melatonin.27,30,48,49 We also observed increased IFN-γ after prolactin pre-incubation Grape seed extract but this effect was not significant, as previously described by Matera et al. and Dimitrov et al.29,30 However, Matera et al. investigated unstimulated T cells while we used polyclonally stimulated Tres. Dimitrov et al. studied the percentage of IFN-γ-producing T cells in whole blood which were stimulated with PMA/ionomycin in the presence of prolactin. By contrast, we pre-incubated T cells with prolactin, performed

the assays (αCD3 stimulated) without prolactin and measured the concentration of IFN-γ in the supernatant. Despite these different approaches, our observations are broadly similar to these other reports.29,30 Our findings on the effect of melatonin are in line with other investigators who did not observe stimulatory effects of melatonin in vitro.49 We could not confirm the proposed Th1-enhancing effect of melatonin in vitro but these published data are from in vivo experiments in mice and conflicting data have also been published.50 In any case, one can speculate, from the effects of cortisol and prolactin, that the hormonal milieu could be one mechanism of the diurnal rhythm of cytokine secretion by Tres. The suppressive activity of nTreg on cytokine secretion by Tres did not correlate with the serum levels of any of the hormones.