Effect of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on lymphocyte blastogenesis in vitro

We evaluated the effect of four non-steroidal drugs on in vitro lymphocyte blastogenesis to the aspecific mitogens phytohaemoagglutinin (PHA), concanavalin A (Con A) and Pokeweed mitogen (PWM). The anti-inflammatory drugs studied were phenylbutazone, indomethacin, lysine acetylsalicylate and ibuprofen lysinate. We used the technique of Penhale et al. for in vitro cultures. The mean percent blastogenic response was nearly 100% or more, for all drugs tested, at the 4 μg/ml and 2 μg/ml concentrations but at the concentrations of 1000 μg/ml and 500 μg/ml, all the drugs tested significantly inhibited lymphocyte blastogenesis. Lymphocyte cultures containing 62.5 μg/ml of indomethacin, lysine acetylsalicylate (=34.7 μg/ml ASA) and ibuprofen lysinate (=36.2 μg/ml ibuprofen) reached in most cases response levels close to normal.