Level of Serum Neopterin and Interleukin-6 In Patients with Thyroid Diseases

Abstract

Summary The purpose of the study was to characterize the immune status in 88 patients (64 women and 24 men) with thyroid diseases and in 36 healthy blood donors as control group. The clinical material consisted of 37 patients with nontoxic nodular goitre, 10 patients with thyroiditis, 27 patients with thyroid adenoma and 14 patients with thyroid carcinoma. The studied parameters included serum neopterin,interleukin-6 (IL-6), also anti-thyroglobulin autoantibodies (ATG) and anti-thyroid microsomal autoantibodies (MAB). The aim of the study was to investigate whether serum neopterin, IL-6, ATG and MAE have any value in distinction between non-toxic nodular goitre, thyroiditis, thyroid adenoma and thyroid carcinoma. 36.4% patients with thyroid carcinoma, 16.7% patients with nontoxic nodular goitre and 9.1 % patients with thyroid adenoma had neopterin levels higher than 10 nmol/1. In patients and in the control group the mean serum levels of neopterin were in normal range. The highest mean level of neopterin was found in patients with thyroid carcinoma (7.14± 5.95 nmol/1). The difference was statistically significant in comparison to the control (p < 0.001) and patients with thyroiditis and thyroid adenoma (p < 0.05). The significantly higher levels of IL-6 were in all patients in comparison to the control (p < 0.0001). Autoantibodies ATG were detected in serum of 45 patients (51.1 %) and autoantibodies MAE were in serum of 34 patients (38.6 % ). Mean levels of these autoantibodies in patients were statistically significantly higher than in the control ' p < 0.05). In patients with ATG and/or MAE mean level of neopterin was significantly higher than in patients without these autoantibodies (p < 0.05). This study has shown that neopterin represents an additional parameter with potential interest in clinical diagnosis of thyroid diseases.