title: [Expression of interleukin-6 and its clinicopathological significance in Castleman's disease].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the expression of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and its clinicopathological significance in Castleman's disease (CD).
  
  
  METHODS
  Clinical data and paraffin blocks of 92 CD patients and 20 cases of lymph node reactive hyperplasia (LRH) as a control group were collected from department of pathology of Peking University Health Science Center. The expression of IL-6 was detected by using immunohistochemical method.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The 92 patients were composed of 42 multicentric variant (MCDs) and 50 unicentric variant (UCDs) clinically, and 30 hyaline-vascular variant (HV-CDs) and 62 plasma cell variant (PC-CDs) morphologically. None of them was positive for HIV tests. There were 56 males and 36 females, and their ages ranged from 4 years to 90 years with the median 41 years. IL-6 was expressed in 77 (83.7%) of 92 CD cases and 1 (5.0%) of 20 LRH cases. The expression rate of IL-6 was 90.5% in MCDs, 78.0% in UCDs, 93.6% in PC-CDs and 63.4% in HV-CDs, respectively. PC-CD cases showed a significantly higher expression rate of IL-6 than HV-CD cases (P = 0.001). All cases with positive IL-6 expression in plasmacytes were PC-CDs, showing obviously higher expression in MCDs than that in UCDs (P = 0.003). Compared with HV-CD cases, much more PC-CD cases showed IL-6 positivity in endothelial cells (P = 0.008). However, IL-6 was rarely expressed by both FDCs and macrophages, with only 3.3% and 10.9% positive cases, respectively. There are 53.2% (41/77) of the IL-6 positive cases and 20.0% (3/15) of IL-6 negative cases suffered from systemic symptoms, showing a significant difference between the two groups (P = 0.018). Cases with IL-6 expression in plasmacytes and macrophages were more likely to suffer from systemic symptoms, especially B type symptoms (P < 0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There is a high expression rate of IL-6 in CD, which is different from LRH. The expression of IL-6 has close relationship with CD subtypes and the presence of systemic symptoms. In all, the evaluation of interleukin-6 is of great value to guide the diagnosis and therapy of CD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, School of Basic Medicine, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing 100191, China.
authors.forename: Yu-mei
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Cui-ling
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Guo-hua
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Xiao-yan
authors.initials: XY
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Zi-fen
authors.initials: ZF
authors.lastname: Gao
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005871:Castleman Disease / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015850:Interleukin-6 / Q000378:metabolism*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: C508600:IL6 protein, human; D015850:Interleukin-6