The Levels of Inflammatory Regulatory Factors in Acute Leukemia Complicated by Infection and Its Clinical Significance

Abstract

To explore the expression levels and clinical significance of helper T cell 1/helper T cell 2 (Th1/Th2) cytokine and interleukin-6 (IL-6) in patients with acute leukemia (AL) complicated by infection. 68 patients with AL complicated by infection admitted to Wuhan Fifth Hospital from May 2017 to January 2020 were enrolled as study group, 50 AL patients without infection were enrolled as AL group, and 30 healthy volunteers checked in physical examination center were enrolled as healthy control group. The levels of serum tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-10 (IL-10), and peripheral blood Th1/Th2 cells subsets were measured and compared among the three groups. The serum IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α and Th1/Th2 were compared between the patients with mild to moderate infection (n=52) and septic shock (n=16). The relationship between IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α, Th1/Th2 and AL infection was analyzed. The levels of IL-6, IL-10 , TNF-α, and the proportion of Th2 of the patients in study group and AL group were significantly higher than those in healthy control group (P<0.001), while the proportion of Th1 and Th1/Th2 were significantly lower than those in healthy control group (P<0.001). The levels of IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-α, and the proportion of Th2 the patients in study group were significantly higher than those in AL group (P<0.001), while the proportion of Th1 and Th1/Th2 were significantly lower than those in AL group (P<0.001). The serum IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-α level of the patients in septic shock group were significantly higher than those in mild-to-moderate infection group (P<0.001), while Th1/Th2 was lower than those in mild-to-moderate infection group (P<0.001). The results of ROC curve analysis showed that the area under the ROC curve (AUC) values of IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α and Th1/Th2 alone for the diagnosis of septic shock were 0.779, 0.761, 0.724 and 0.718, which were lower than that their combination (0.910) (P<0.05). The levels of serum IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-α are high in patients with AL complicated infection and septic shock, while Th1/Th2 cell subsets is low. The combined detection of serum IL-6, IL-10, TNF-α and Th1/Th2 is a good diagnostic value for predicting the occurrence of severe septic shock.