Differences Of Plasma Il-1 And Tnf-Alpha In Healthy Chinese Population

Pleiotropic proinflammatory cytokines, interleukin-1 (IL-1) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), involved in the regulations of various immune responses, inflammatory processes and hematopoiesis. In the present study, the expression levels of IL-1 and TNF-alpha were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Following the cytokine blockade as a successful clinical therapy for autoimm une diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, the patients are more susceptible to a variety of opportunistic infections. IL-1 and TNF-alpha may be useful predictive biomarkers of diseases and offer potential targets for therapeutic intervention of inflammatory diseases. However, our results showed that the plasma IL-1 level was significantly higher in women compared to men (69.5 +/- 19.8 pg/ml in men and 80.1 +/- 19.5 pg/ml in women, respectively); the plasma levels of TNF-alpha were higher in men than women (20.8 +/- 4.9 pg/ml and 18.7 +/- 7.1 pg/ml, respectively). The significant gender difference of plasma interleukin-1 (IL-1) and TNF-alpha levels present in healthy adults in Jiangsu Province, China (P= 0.002 and P= 0.015, respectively), and may be as a hint for sex differences of susceptibility to many diseases and elementary immune response.