Postmortem cytokine levels and severity of traumatic injuries.
The relationship between postmortem serum cytokine levels and severity of traumatic injuries was studied. The postmortem serum levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) of 131 victims who died from traumatic injury were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method and compared with scores of total abbreviated injury scale (total AIS) and injury severity score (ISS) calculated from detailed autopsy reports. A significant positive correlation was observed between IL-6 and total AIS (rs=0.4508, p<0.0001), between IL-6 and ISS (rs=0.3337, p<0.0001), between IL-8 and total AIS (rs=0.6593, p<0.0001), and between IL-8 and ISS (rs=0.5305, p<0.0001). The significant correlation between cytokine levels and anatomical traumatic severity indicated that the cytokine levels are useful objective indexes of traumatic severity. In addition, the total AIS is a suitable marker to evaluate traumatic severity as the coefficient of correlation between the cytokine levels and the total AIS was higher than that for the ISS values.
Department of Forensic Medicine, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University, Japan. Mimasaka9@aol.com
Sohtaro
S
Mimasaka
Yuki
Y
Ohtsu
Shigeyuki
S
Tsunenari
Masato
M
Funayama
D015998:Abbreviated Injury Scale; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D049429:Forensic Pathology; D006801:Humans; D015850:Interleukin-6 / Q000097:blood*; D016209:Interleukin-8 / Q000097:blood*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011180:Postmortem Changes; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000097:blood* / Q000145:classification / Q000209:etiology
D015850:Interleukin-6; D016209:Interleukin-8