Correlation of Serum Levels of Interleukin-6 with the Severity of Ulcerative Colitis

Abstract

Ulcerative colitis is an inflammatory disease of unknown etiology affecting the colonic mucosa from the rectum to the cecum, it is a remissions and exacerbations. Approximately 70% of patients will have complete symptomatic remissions between intermittent attacks. 10% of patients will have one initial attack and will experience no subsequent attacks, and 15–20% will be troubled by continuous symptoms that occur without remission. Ulcerative colitis can be classified into Mild, Moderate and Sever according to the severity of the disease which based on Truelove & Witt classification. Truelove & Witt classification depend on 5 parameters as nomcer of motions per day, temperature, pulse, hemoglobin level and ESR. IL-6 is a pleiotropic proinflammatory cytokine secreted by T cells and macrophages to stimulate immune response with a wide range of biological activities in immune regulation, hematopoiesis, inflammation and oncogenesis, It is highly elevated in autoimmune diseases Most of studies reported that there is a correlation between serum levels of IL-6 and inflammatory bowel including ulcerative colitis especially those with active ulcerative colitis. Also, revealed that it`s much higher in patients with severe ulcerative colitis in comparison to healthy individuals. Other studies found that IL-6 levels are not significantly high in sera of patients with ulcerative colitis compared to normal individuals. This study was designed to assess the association between elevated levels of serum interleukin 6 (Il-6) and severity of ulcerative colitis. It was held in Internal Medicine Department, Al-Haram Hospital. For better assessment, this study included number of (60) cases. They were divided into main three groups; Group A; formed of 20 patients with Active ulcerative colitis and Group B; formed of 20 patients with inactive ulcerative colitis and Group C; formed of 20 healthy individuals as controllers. All the studied cases were subjected to the following: careful medical history taking, full physical examination, and laboratory investigations including CBC, liver function tests, coagulation profile and serum IL-6. Abdominal ultra-