Background
Measure the serum cytokine levels in untreated leprosy with different parts of the spectrum of leprosy.
Methods
Concentrations of IL-4, IL-6 and IL-12 in the serum of patients were determined with a commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kit (R&D Systems) according mannufactors instructions.
Results
We observed that mean of IL-4 and IL-6 were higher in lepromatous pole and IL-12 and TNF-α were higher in tuberculoid pole, but only IL-12 were statistic significantly. Our data also demonstrated that most of the patients present very lows or absent levels of TNF-α, IL-4 and IL-6.
Discussion
This is probably because leprosy is a chronic infectious disease and this profile cytokines is increase acute infections. Thus, studies of cytokine in leprosy have given us a more detailed description of the immunological parameters of the polar types of leprosy and play a significant role in classification and prognosis of this disease.