Assessment of IL-38 Levels in Patients with Acquired Immune-Mediated Polyneuropathies

• Published in: Journal of molecular neuroscience Vol. 70; no. 9; pp. 1385 - 1388
• Main Authors: Ali, Zahra Pour Mohammad, Ghafouri-Fard, Soudeh, Komaki, Alireza, Mazdeh, Mehrdokht, Taheri, Mohammad, Eftekharian, Mohammad Mahdi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.09.2020; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Cell Biology; Cytokines; Demyelination; Gender; Immune response (humoral); Inflammation; Interleukin 1; Neurochemistry; Neurology; Neuropathy; Neurosciences; Polyneuropathy; Proteomics; Subgroups; Immune-mediated neuropathy; Il-38; AIDP; CIDP
• ISSN: 0895-8696; 1559-1166
• DOI: 10.1007/s12031-020-01558-z

Acute and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (AIDP and CIDP) are two types of immune-mediated neuropathies in which abnormal cellular or humoral immune responses have been observed. Although dysregulation of several cytokines has been detected in these disorders, expression of interleukin 38 (IL-38) has not yet been assessed in AIDP and CIDP. In the current study, we evaluated serum concentrations of this member of the IL-1 family of cytokines in 24 patients with CIDP, 13 patients with AIDP and 27 healthy subjects. We detected higher levels of IL-38 in CIDP patients compared with controls. When assessing study subgroups based on gender, there were no significant differences in IL-38 levels among the three female subgroups ( P  = 0.14). However, the difference among male subgroups was significant ( P  = 0.010). A Tukey test showed significant differences between male CIDP patients and male controls ( P  = 0.014). Considering the proposed anti-inflammatory role of IL-38, higher levels of this cytokine in CIDP might reflect the presence of a compensatory mechanism to reduce inflammatory processes in these patients. Further longitudinal assessment of this cytokine is need to test this hypothesis.