Chest
Clinical InvestigationsPneumoniaRole of Interleukin-18 and T-helper Type 1 Cytokines in the Development of Mycoplasma pneumoniae Pneumonia in Adults
Section snippets
Study Population
Twenty-one patients with MP (median, 34 years; range, 20 to 64 years; 17 women and 4 men) and 21 sex- and age-matched healthy subjects (median, 33 years; range, 20 to 61 years; 17 women and 4 men) were recruited from Sapporo Medical University Hospital and Kushiro City General Hospital after giving informed consent. All patients were febrile with a persistent cough and were admitted to the hospital because of acute pneumonia. We excluded patients with the following conditions: (1) purulent
Results
Significantly higher levels of serum IL-18 (median, 248 pg/mL [range, 89 to 441 pg/mL] vs median, 126 pg/mL [range, 47 to 217 pg/mL]; p < 0.0001) and sIL-2R (median, 617 U/mL [range, 410 to 1,032 U/mL] vs median, 425 U/mL [range, 268 to 601 U/mL]; p < 0.0001) were found in patients with MP as compared with healthy control subjects (Fig 1). There was a nonsignificant trend to an increase in serum IFN-γ (median, 0.61 pg/mL [range, < 0.1 to 12.7 pg/mL] vs median, < 0.1 pg/mL [range, < 0.1 to 0.71
Discussion
In this study, serum IL-18 levels in patients with severe MP were higher than those in mild cases, and the IL-18 levels, but not serum IFN-γ levels, correlated with the number of affected lobes detected by CT scans. We have previously shown that IL-18 levels are high when pleural effusion is associated with MP.18 IL-18 can induce granulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor and upregulate the intercellular adhesion molecule 1 expression in a monocyte cell line; thus, the effects of IL-18 on
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