Serum IL-17 concentration in acute pancreatitis with the emphasis on the severity of the disease

Introduction: The severe form of acute pancreatitis is connected with serious risk of the development of inflammatory response, failure of organs, and eventually death.
Aim: To evaluate the concentration of interleukin-17 in the serum of patients suffering from acute pancreatitis with reference to the clinical course of mild and severe forms.
Material and methods: The examination was conducted on a group of 30 people with the symptoms of acute pancreatitis. The age of patients ranged from 30 to 60. There were 15 people with the mild form and 15 with the severe form of the disease. Patients were chosen on the basis of the APACHE II and Ranson tests. The results of patients with acute pancreatitis were compared with those from 10 people of the control group – volunteers aged 30 to 60 years. In those groups, 30 patients with acute pancreatitis and 10 volunteers were examined to measure interleukin-17, elastase and proteins immediately after admission to hospital (day “0”), then on the first, second and sixth day. The concentration of interleukin-17 was evaluated based on the ELISA test. On the first and sixth day of hospitalization blood coagulation was measured. The results were evaluated with the Wilcoxon test.
Results: On the basis of the examination one can observe that the concentration of interleukin-17 increases statistically significantly on the zero, first and second day of hospitalization. However, they do not correlate with degrees of the disease within the groups of people that were examined. On the sixth day of hospitalization the concentration of interleukin-17 does not increase statistically significantly. The results concerning elastase indicate that the rate of its activity in the serum could be a helpful factor in the diagnosis. It is different in the group of patients with the severe form of acute pancreatitis and the volunteers (on the zero, first, second and sixth day). Nonetheless, the activity of elastase could not serve to diagnose the degree of disease due to the lack of statistically significant differences between patients with mild and severe acute pancreatitis on the zero, first, second and sixth day of hospitalization. In our own examination we have observed that every day, patients with the severe form of acute pancreatitis had greater concentration of CRP than patients with the mild form of the disease. However, a statistically significant difference between those groups was revealed only on the zero day. The average results of the INR rate on the first and sixth day in the group of people with the severe form of acute pancreatitis are higher than those suffering from the mild form. In both groups, none of the patients was noticed for any other deviation in the blood coagulation on the first and sixth day of hospitalization. The mortality rate in the group of severe acute pancreatitis was 13.3%, whereas in the group of the mild form there was no case of death.
Conclusions: Concentration of interleukin-17 in serum could not serve to evaluate the severe form of acute pancreatitis. However, it could be helpful in the diagnosis of this disease.