title: Importance of interleukin 6 in pathogenesis of inflammatory bowel disease.
abstract: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), encompassing ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD), is an uncontrolled chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract caused by an interaction of diverse genes and environmental factors. There is growing evidence that cytokine production plays an important role in IBD. One of the key roles in signaling pathway in development of IBD is performed by interleukin 6 (IL-6), although molecular mechanism of this pathway is not yet fully understood. In order to assess the clinical relevance of IL-6 serum concentration in patients with CD and UC we performed cross-sectional, case-control study of IL-6 levels in patients' and healthy blood donors' sera. A total of 100 CD and UC patients and 71 healthy blood donors were investigated. Clinical activity of CD and UC was evaluated using the Crohn's disease activity index and Truelove-Witt's criteria, respectively. Quantitative assessment of serum IL-6 was performed with solid-phase, enzyme-labeled, chemiluminescent sequential immunometric assay. Our results indicate that serum IL-6 is a clinically relevant parameter for CD and UC that strongly correlates with inflammatory activity of disease. We confirmed and extended the role of cytokine production patterns for IBD presentation in Croatian population.
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Takac
authors.forename: Silvio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mihaljević
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Stefanić
authors.forename: Ljubica
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Glavas-Obrovac
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kibel
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Samardzija
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015212:Inflammatory Bowel Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology*; D015850:Interleukin-6 / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D015850:Interleukin-6