title: Serum levels of interleukin-12 in Graves' disease and their dynamic changes after surgery.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the role of interleukin-12 (IL-12) in Graves' disease, we measured the pre- and postoperative levels of serum IL-12 in patients undergoing surgery for Graves' disease.
  
  
  METHODS
  The subjects of this study were 73 patients with Graves' disease, admitted for surgical treatment after taking antithyroid drugs for various durations. We collected blood from 11 of these patients, 1, 3, and 6 months postoperatively, to measure the serum IL-12 levels using a Human IL-12 +p40 Immunoassay Kit.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The preoperative levels of serum IL-12 were higher in patients with Graves' disease than in healthy controls. Based on the preoperative data, there was a significant relationship between the levels of serum IL-12 and free T3. An analysis of the postoperative time course of these 11 patients showed that the levels of serum IL-12 decreased gradually from 1 month to 6 months, postoperatively. There was also a significant correlation between the levels of serum IL-12 and soluble IL-2R, and a significant negative correlation between the levels of serum IL-12 and thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor antibody.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Measurement of the levels of serum IL-12 may be a valuable immunological marker in the time course of treatment for Graves' disease.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Saitama Medical School, 38 Morohongo, Moroyama-machi, Iruma, Saitama, 350-0495, Japan.
authors.forename: Saburo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Murakami
authors.forename: Katsuhiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Okubo
authors.forename: Yoshitaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tsuji
authors.forename: Hideto
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sakata
authors.forename: Masataka
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kikuchi
authors.forename: Takehiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.forename: Takaharu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kato
authors.forename: Renzo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hirayama
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D006111:Graves Disease / Q000097:blood* / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D018664:Interleukin-12 / Q000097:blood*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric
chemical_list: D018664:Interleukin-12