Evaluation of interleukin‐38 levels in serum of patients with coronavirus disease 2019.

alexandrossfakianakis shared this article with you from Inoreader Evaluation of interleukin‐38 levels in serum of patients with coronavirus disease 2019. Via Journal of Medical Virology Abstract Interleukin-38 (IL-38) has recently been considered as a cytokine with anti-inflammatory properties in viral respiratory infections, particularly coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19), but the evidence has not been well elucidated. Therefore, a case-control study was conducted to determine IL-38 serum levels in 148 patients with COVID-19 (45 moderate, 55 severe and 48 critical) and 113 controls. Results demonstrated that IL-38 levels did not show significant differences between patients and controls (68.7 [interquartile range: 62.7-75.6] vs. 67.7 [58.0-82.6] pg/mL; probability = 0.457). Similarly, patients stratified by disease severity, age group, gender or chronic disease showed no significant differences between IL-38 levels in each stratum. Whereas, overweight/obese patients had a significantly lower median of IL-38 compared to normal-weight patients. Further, IL-38 showed significantly higher levels in the age group ≥ 50 years of patients with crit ical illness than in the age group < 50 years. Female patients with severe disease also showed significantly elevated levels of IL-38 compared to male patients. In conclusion, the study indicated that serum IL-38 levels were not affected by COVID-19 infection, but the distribution of patients according to disease severity, age, gender and BMI may better reveal the role of IL-38 in disease pathogenesis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.