Objectives: Cytokines play an important role in the pathogenesis of periodontal diseases. Interactions between different cytokines may help to understand the response of gingiva to inflammation and also progression of gingivitis to periodontitis. In this study, we investigated interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) in gingivitis and periodontitis lesions by immunohistochemistry. Methods: Systemically healty, 10 periodontitis, 5 gingivitis and 5 periodontally healty subjects were involved in the study. Before gingival biopsies were taken, pocket depth, attachment loss, gingival index, plaque index and bleeding on probing measurements were done. The gingival biopsies were frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at –80°C until immunohistochemical identification of IL-4 and IL-8 were performed. For morphologic examination, gingival biopsies were stained with haematoxylin and eozin (H&E) prior to immunohistochemistry. Results: Gingival biopsies taken from gingivitis and periodontitis patients showed epitelial acanthosis, vasculer proliferation and T-lymphocyte infiltration. The periodontitis sections also expressed dense infiltration of B-lymphocytes and macrophages with H&E staining. Immunohistochemical detection of cytokines revealed that, health and gingivitis sections demonstrated only a minimal staining but periodontitis sections expressed both stromal and cellular staining for IL-4. We also detected that healty sections presented IL-8 staining far more numerous than gingivitis. Conclusion: Sufficient host immune response can be achieved with a balanced cytokine network in periodontal diseases. In order to clarify pathogenesis, identification of dominant cytokines in diseased lesions and gene polymophisms of these cytokines are needed to be analyzed.

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