Several immune responses are either limited to or concentrated in a given organ. Cytokines produced during ongoing immune responses have organ-localized effects that can be only partially mimicked upon their systemic delivery. Recombinant adenoviruses are efficient vectors to induce transient organ-localized cytokine expression. This allows in vivo analysis of the effects of cytokines produced spatially and temporally in a manner comparable to that observed during immune responses. The authors generated recombinant adenovirus for rat IL-4 (AdIL-4) and IL-10 (AdIL-10) to analyse the in vivo effects of these two important immunoregulatory molecules after gene transfer in the liver. It was first established that AdIL-4 and AdIL-10 were able to direct the production of biologically active cytokines by different rat cell types in vitro. Intraportal injection of doses of up to 10(10) pfu of AdIL-10 or control non-coding recombinant adenovirus were well tolerated, and hepatic histology showed only mild alterations. Conversely, animals receiving more than 2.5 x 10(9) pfu of AdIL-4 showed dose-dependent mortality, with clinical signs of hepatic dysfunction. Liver histology in animals receiving 2.5 x 10(9) pfu of AdIL-4 showed severe acute hepatitis with maximal lesions between day 7 and 14 and almost complete normalization by day 28 after gene transfer. The leukocyte infiltrate was composed primarily of mononuclear cells, but eosinophils and mast cells were significantly increased as compared to control animals. Hepatic function was also altered in animals that received AdIL-4, with kinetics similar to that of histological lesions. Our study describes a model for investigating cytokine function in vivo through liver-localized transgene expression mediated by adenoviral vectors and demonstrates that liver production of IL-4 but not IL-10 results in acute severe hepatitis.