Recombinant tumor necrosis factors mediate platelet cytotoxicity to Schistosoma mansoni larvae.

The involvement of platelets in the immunity directed toward the parasite Schistosoma mansoni has been demonstrated in vitro and in vivo. The killing properties of platelets were shown previously to involve specific IgE after their binding to a membrane receptor. More recently, we have demonstrated that lymphokines released by S. mansoni Ag- or lectin-stimulated CD4+/CD8-T cells were able to induce the platelet cytotoxicity. The isoelectric focusing of the T lymphocyte supernatants showed that two factors were able to stimulate the platelet killing functions. One of them was clearly identified as being IFN-gamma. The present work demonstrates that the second lymphokine was TNF. Indeed the rTNF-beta and, to a lesser extent, rTNF-alpha, induce normal platelets into killer cells for the young larvae of schistosome. Moreover, an additive effect of the TNF-alpha and IFN-gamma has been observed.