In the last few years, a number of cytokines have been recognized as importantintercellular signals with a relevant role in the pathogenesis of several humaninflammatory and autoimmune diseases, which is mirrored by their growing relevance inclinical pathology as biomarkers of disease onset, progression, and remission. Leukocyterecruitment and activation are key steps in the pathogenesis of several humaninflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as pulmonary disease, neurodegenerativediseases, autoimmune thyroid diseases, type 1 diabetes mellitus, Addison’s disease,multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoraiasis and cancer. This process is coordinatedby chemokines, a large subfamily of cytokines with chemotactic activity for differentleukocyte subsets and an emerging role in major human diseases.After an overview of the chemokine system, this essay summarizes informationavailable on clinical situations in which chemokine determination might be of diagnosticvalue with the aim to evaluate chemokines as new biomarkers of interest in clinicalpathology. A number of methodological approaches such as enzyme-linkedimmunosorbent assay, flow cytometry, immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization andDNA microarray gene expression analysis are available for specific and sensitivedetermination of chemokines/chemokine receptors and their gene polymorphism, inbiologic fluids and tissue specimens, some of these methods are adequate forhighthroughput applications. Thus, although clinical laboratory use of chemokines asbiomarkers is limited, the time is ready to use them as a useful biomarker for monitoringthe phase and the severity of the inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.