Correlation of serum interleukin-8 with disease severity in aplastic anemia

Aplastic anemia is a heterogeneous group of hematological disorders identified by the presence of one or more cytopenias in the bone marrow or the peripheral blood or both, affecting either one or multiple blood cell lineages. The pathophysiology of this disorder is unclear; however, the prevailing hypothesis posits that an aberrant immune response is responsible for the death of hematopoietic precursor stem cells due to autoreactive cytotoxic T lymphocytes in individuals with a genetic predisposition. Interleukin-8 acts as a pleiotropic prototype chemokine and serves as a powerful inhibitor of myelopoiesis and assumes an essential role in both the initiation and progression of acute inflammation and tissue damage. Consequently, it is postulated that the sustained elevation in interleukin-8 production could potentially lead to immune-mediated bone marrow failure in aplastic anemia. The aim of this study was to evaluate the serum interleukin-8 concentrations in individuals with aplastic anemia as well as investigate its potential connection with disease severity.

This study was performed at the National Center of Hematology and included 28 aplastic anemia patients and 30 healthy individuals matched by age and gender as a control group. The serum interleukin-8 levels were measured by the quantitative sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) method.

Considerrable elevation in serum interleukin-8 levels were observed between the two groups (p-value = 0.405). Of the aplastic anemia patients, severe cases had significantly higher levels of interleukin-8 compared to non-severe patients (p-value = 0.0495), with a cutoff serum level of 7.71 pg/mL.

Interleukin-8 may have a role in the immune-mediated pathophysiology of aplastic anemia as well as have a significant correlation with disease severity.