Assessment of IL-6 Serum Level in Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Abstract

Background: Interleukin-6(IL-6) is a pleiotropic cytokine that plays a major role in response to injury or infections and involved in immune response, inflammation and haematopoiesis. It is produced by a variety of cell types in response to variety of stimulants. Also deregulation impacts to numerous disease states, including many types of cancer. Elevated IL-6 levels have been observed in most types of cancer and it’s implicated in the pathogenesis of several disease such as acute myeloid leukemia, multiple myeloma, lymphoma and it may be a prognostic factor for solid tumors, such as prostate cancer. Objectives: Estimation of the serum levels of IL-6 in patients with AML in different stages of the disease and assess their prognostic value and study its relationship with bacteremia, total leukocyte count ,and hemoglobin concentration. Materials and Methods: Forty patients of AML in different stages in National centre of hematology-Baghdad were studied immunologically for the detection of serum IL-6 by Enzyme Linked Immune Sorbent Assay(ELISA) kit. Specimen of blood collected from AML in relapse stage with episode of fever, were subjected to well known established microbiological methods for diagnosis and identification of isolates and data were compared with 20 healthy donors. Results: Newly diagnosed and in relapse stage patients with AML had significantly higher serum levels of IL-6 compared with both control group and leukemic patients in remission stage P<0.05,in addition there was a positive correlation of IL-6 with the presence of fever due to bacterial infection .The clinical specimen result in(8) isolates, from which (6) were coagulase negative and (2) were staphylococcus aureus ,all isolates show high sensitivity to erythromycin and high resistant to chloromphenicol .Also IL-6 level correlated positively with total leukocyte count (TLC) and inversely with hemoglobin (Hb) concentration in AML at diagnostic and relapse stage.