Skip Main Navigation outline goes here The Lancet, Volume 352,
Issue 9135, Page 1221, 10 October 1998
doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)60557-0Cite or Link Using DOI
Physiological or pathological chemokines  CA Michie a Arnout Jan
de Beaufort and colleagues (July 11, p 102)1 propose that
bioactive interleukin 8 (IL-8) from meconium might contribute to
the pathology in the lung of infants after meconium aspiration.
The study is fascinating because it indicates one of the great
challenges of chemokine biology—when are these substances
pathological? An initial criticism of the investigation is that
the researchers could have used normal amniotic fluid as a
further control for their in-vitro experiments. Normal amniotic
fluid contains IL-8 and should have been used as one of the
baselines for their experiments.2 The lack of a dose-response
curve of meconium concentration and neutrophil chemotaxis leads
to a second critical observation: the investigators limit their
studies to neutrophils. IL-8 is chemotactic in vitro an