علاقة أنترلوكينات المصل 15 و22 و23 مع شدة ربو الاطفال

Correlation of the Serum Interleukins 15, 22 and 23 with Severity of Pediatric Asthma

Asthma is a common chronic inflammatory disease of the lungs airways, considered
a major global health problem, affecting at least 3.5-20 % of the population in the world.
Asthma affects people of all ages, but it usually begins in childhood. The inflammatory
response is mediated by the allergic IgE produced during allergic sensitization, and linked
to mast cells triggered by allergy re-exposure. IgE plays an active part in the pathogenesis
of allergic asthma. It was suggested that IL-15 is critical for preservation of allergen
induced airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR). While IL-22 plays a crucial role in antigen
sensitization in a murine asthma model. Also, it was also suggested that the serum IL-23
could be a suitable marker of bronchial function impairment in allergic asthmatic children.
This study is a case-control study that included 60 asthmatic children (35 male and
25 female) as the patients group age ranged between 4 months to 14 years old attending
the asthma clinic at Karbala Teaching Hospital for Children in the period extending from
November 2020 to March 2021, and 60 non-asthmatic (32 male and 28 female) agematched patients group attending the outpatient clinic were recruited as control group.
Whole blood was collected from each participant, noting that the sera were used to
determine total serum IgE and interleukins 15,22 and 23 levels for all samples by ELISA
technique, while whole blood was used for absolute eosinophils count determination
Using Sysmex XN-350 five differential automated hematology analyzers used to detect
eosinophils count.
The result of this study showed a significant association between the IgE and IL-23
serum levels with asthmatic patients (P=0.005, P=0.008) respectively. Also, the study
showed a significant difference between mild and moderate asthma regarding aggravating
by upper respiratory inflammation (P = 0.031). In addition, there was a significant
difference (P = 0.049) regarding the treatment between mild and moderate asthmatic
patients. Regarding the correlation between the studied markers and the duration of asthma,
there was a significant negative correlation (p = 0.030) between IL-23 serum level and
duration of asthma.
The present study showed a significant difference (P =0.046) in the severity of
asthma depending on the duration, which was higher in moderate asthma than the mild
asthmatic patients with a mean (36.70) and (17.86 ) respectively. There was a significant
difference (P= 0.004) in the EOS count according to each asthma phenotype in the current
study; it was the highest in allergic asthma with a mean (1.2518).
The results of this study have shown an elevated serum level of IL-23 in the patients
group compared wthe ith control group of asthmatic children; therefore, IL-23 marker may
have an important role in diagnosis of severe asthmatic children. Also this result shown a
non-significant association between IL-15 and IL-22 with the severity of asthmatic
children.