Obeagu EI, Okoroiwu IL, Nwanjo HU and Nwosu DC
Tuberculosis has been a great threat to mankind and has been defying treatments. Tuberculosis presents with a lot of changes in the system of the patients. This study was done to determine the levels of interferon-gamma, interleukins of the tuberculosis patients in TB directly observed treatmentshort course (TB DOTS) center of FMC, Umuahia. A total of 150 subjects aged 18-60 years were enlisted for this study. The subjects were grouped into: Group A (50 control subjects) and Group B (100 TB Subjects). About 4.5 ml of blood were collected into plain tubes for assay of interferon gamma and interleukins (6 and 10). The cytokines were measured using MELNI ELISA Kits. The results were expressed as mean ± SD. The data was analyzed with the statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 20 using ANOVA the level of significance set at P<0.05. There was a significant decrease (P<0.05) with increasing months of treatment for TB group (48.94 ± 3.73 pg/ml, 46.64 ± 1.71 pg/ml, 38.76 ± 1.48 pg/ml, 26.77 ± 1.27 pg/ml) and TB-HIV (54.04 ± 3.54 pg/ml, 37.58 ± 1.99 pg/ml, 28.27 ± 1.35 pg/ml, 18.81 ± 1.38 pg/ml) respectively. The results of interleukin 6 (IL-6) in TB group on baseline (15.92 ± 2.43 pg/ml) were significantly higher (P<0.05) than TB on 2 months, 4 months and 6 months treatment (14.10 ± 1.97 pg/ml, 11.14 ± 1.31 pg/ml, 8.66 ± 1.12 pg/ml) but no significant difference (P>0.05) in TB group on 6 months treatment (8.66 ± 1.12 pg/ml) compared to the control group (7.98 ± 0.22 pg/ml).There was significant decrease (P<0.05) in IL-10 with increasing months of treatment (2 months, 4 months, 6 months on treatment) for TB subgroups based on the duration of treatment (21.06 ± 2.84 pg/ml, 18.93 ± 1.34 pg/ml, 15.08 ± 1.12 pg/ml, 10.62 ± 1.19 pg/ml). The results showed significant decrease in IFN-γ, IL-6 and IL-10 with increase in duration of treatment of the TB patients. The study shows that IFN-γ, IL-6 and IL-10 are some of the biomarkers in the pathogenesis of TB The cytokines can be used as prognostic and diagnostic markers as their levels decreased with increased duration of treatment of the patients.
