Serum IL-1β and IL-17 levels in patients with COPD: associations with clinical parameters

Abstract

COPD is a chronic airway inflammatory disease characterized mainly by neutrophil airway infiltrations. Interleukin (IL)-1β and IL-17 are the key mediators of neutrophilic airway inflammation in COPD. This study was undertaken to evaluate the serum IL-1β and IL-17 levels and associations between these two key mediators with clinical parameters in COPD patients. Serum samples were collected from 60 COPD subjects during the acute exacerbation of COPD, 60 subjects with stable COPD and 40 healthy control subjects. Commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay kits were used to measure the serum IL-1β and IL-17 concentrations. The association between serum IL-1β and IL-17 with FEV₁% predicted, C-reactive protein, neutrophil percentage and smoking status (pack-years) was assessed in the COPD patients. We found that serum IL-1β and IL-17 levels in acute exacerbation of COPD subjects were significantly higher than that in stable COPD or control subjects and were positively correlated to serum C-reactive protein levels, neutrophil % and smoking status (pack-years) but negatively correlated with FEV₁% predicted in COPD patients. More importantly, serum IL-1β levels were markedly positively associated with serum IL-17 levels in patients with COPD (P=0.741, P<0.001). In conclusion, elevated serum IL-1β and IL-17 levels may be used as a biomarker for indicating persistent neutrophilic airway inflammation and potential ongoing exacerbation of COPD.

Keywords:

• neutrophilic airway inflammation
• cigarette smoking
• exacerbation

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to Jie Liu for specimen collection and Xiao Kuang for date processing and statistical analysis.

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No 81572284) and the Important Research and Development Plan of Hunan Provincial Science and Technology Department (Grant No 2015SK20662).

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.