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Published on: November 29, 2019
Interleukin-6 analysis of 572 consecutive CSF samples from neurological disorders: A special focus on neuromyelitis
Akiyuki Uzawa1, Masahiro Mori1, Hiroki Masuda1
1Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, Japan.
Background:
Elevation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) interleukin (IL)-6 has been reported in various neurological disorders but has never been systematically analyzed. Our main objectives are to compare the CSF IL-6 levels among various neurological disorders and to evaluate the significance of CSF IL-6 measurements for the diagnosis of neuromyelitis optica (NMO).
Methods:
We retrospectively investigated the IL-6 levels of 572 consecutive CSF samples in patients with various neurological disorders. Additionally, the associations between clinical manifestations in NMO patients and CSF IL-6 levels were closely investigated.
Results:
Among the neurological disorders, patients with NMO had the highest CSF IL-6 level. Receiver operating characteristic analysis found the optimal cutoff CSF IL-6 value for diagnosing NMO as 7.8pg/ml, and the sensitivity and specificity were 0.7317 and 0.7694, respectively. In NMO, CSF IL-6 levels were correlated with the length of the spinal cord lesion and anti-aquaporin-4 antibody-positivity and decreased after treatment.
Conclusion:
CSF IL-6 can be high in various inflammatory and non-inflammatory CNS disorders, but its upregulation appears to be the most remarkable in NMO.
