Serum Interleukin-10 as a Potential Biomarker for Deep Remission and Histologic Activity in Ulcerative Colitis

Area of Science:

• Gastroenterology
• Immunology
• Biomarker Discovery

Background:

• Deep remission, combining endoscopic and histologic healing, is a key therapeutic goal in ulcerative colitis (UC).
• Current non-invasive biomarkers for assessing histologic inflammation in UC are limited.
• Identifying reliable biomarkers is crucial for optimizing UC treatment strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between serum interleukin-10 (IL-10) concentrations and deep remission in UC patients.
• To evaluate the discriminatory performance of serum IL-10 in identifying deep remission.
• To explore the potential of serum IL-10 as a non-invasive biomarker for histologic healing in UC.

Main Methods:

• Prospective observational study of adult UC patients undergoing colonoscopy.
• Serum IL-10 levels measured via ELISA prior to endoscopy.
• Histologic healing defined by Geboes score < 2.0; deep remission defined by endoscopic and histologic healing.
• Statistical analysis included Firth penalized logistic regression and ROC analysis with bootstrap validation.

Main Results:

• 18 out of 44 patients (40.9%) achieved deep remission.
• Serum IL-10 levels were significantly higher in patients with histologic healing (p < 0.001).
• Log-transformed IL-10 showed independent association with deep remission (AUC 0.85).
• Non-detectable IL-10 identified persistent histologic activity in endoscopic remission with high sensitivity (92.9%) and NPV (94.4%).

Conclusions:

• Serum IL-10 concentrations are independently associated with deep remission in UC.
• Serum IL-10 demonstrated promising discriminatory performance for deep remission in this cohort.
• These findings are hypothesis-generating and require external validation for clinical application.