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Veterans Affairs Medical Center, New Orleans, LA 70146.

1. Previous work has shown that one mechanism by which blood-borne interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1) may be able to affect the central nervous system (CNS) is by direct transport into the brain across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). The BBB of the brain consists of endothelial (between blood and interstitial fluid) and ependymal (between blood and cerebrospinal fluid) barriers. Which of these barriers IL-1 can cross has not previously been investigated. At the spinal cord, which could be the site of action for some of the effects of IL-1 such as analgesia, the BBB consists only of the endothelial barrier. 2. We show here that IL-1 labelled with 125I (I-IL) is transported across the BBB of the spinal cord by a saturable system similar to the one previously described for the brain. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) showed that most of the material entering the spinal cord represented intact I-IL. The BBB of the spinal cord was no more leaky to radioactively labelled albumin than the BBB of the brain and was not disrupted by 50 micrograms kg-1 of IL-1. 3. Capillary depletion showed that most of the I-IL entered the parenchymal-interstitial fluid space of the spinal cord with only a modest amount being sequestered by the endothelial cells of its BBB. 4. I-IL entered the cervical, thoracic and lumbar regions of the spinal cord equally well. I-IL entering at the brain and diffusing caudally was estimated only to account for about 1% of the total radioactivity found in the spinal cord after i.v. injection.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)