The influence of general relativistic effects on spectral line profiles is studied. Some peculiarities observed in the profiles of broad lines of AGNs, like the global redshift of the line and simultaneous blueshift of the peak of the profile with respect to the reference system of the narrow lines, are obtainable if the source region is rotating with relativistic speeds around the active nucleus. The main effects responsible for the asymmetry are the 'beaming' of the radiation, which enhances the wavelengths on the blue side, together with the usual gravitational redshift and transversal Doppler effects. A good fitting of the resulting expressions for the simple model considered in this paper to the observational data for the blueshift of the profile peak is obtained.