Systemic Cytokine Patterns and Histologic Disease Spectrum in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Area of Science:

• Gastroenterology
• Immunology
• Molecular Biology

Background:

• Histologic mucosal healing is a key target in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) management.
• Non-invasive biomarkers for assessing histologic disease activity in IBD are limited.
• Circulating cytokine patterns may serve as immune signals for histologic disease activity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate serum cytokine patterns, specifically Interleukin-10 (IL-10) and Interleukin-23 (IL-23), as potential non-invasive correlates of histologic disease activity in IBD.
• To assess the relationship between cytokine detectability and the spectrum of histologic disease severity.

Main Methods:

• Prospective cross-sectional study involving 59 IBD patients and 36 healthy controls.
• Quantification of serum IL-10 and IL-23 using ELISA.
• Histologic activity graded using the Geboes score.
• Statistical analysis included non-parametric methods and multivariable logistic regression with Firth penalization.

Main Results:

• Serum IL-10 showed reduced detectability in active inflammation and was inversely associated with histologic severity.
• Detectable IL-23 was primarily observed in moderate-to-severe inflammation but lacked graded discrimination.
• The number of IL-23 observations limited interpretation.

Conclusions:

• IL-10 and IL-23 exhibit distinct patterns related to regulatory signaling and inflammatory thresholds in IBD.
• IL-23 did not demonstrate independent clinical utility in this dataset.
• Findings are exploratory and necessitate validation in larger prospective cohorts.