Association between Inflammatory Cytokines and Liver Functions in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

Abstract

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with abnormal liver tests, and the medications used for RA are often hepatotoxic. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate an association between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines and liver function tests in RA patients.
 Methods: In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 88 RA patients were included, 84 of them were women and 4 men, aged 21–81 years. Serum interleukin-10 (IL-10), interleukin-17 (IL-17), Osteopontin (OPN) were measured and liver function tests were conducted.
 Results: The frequency of RA was higher among adults aged >41 years (72 [81.8%]) than young adults aged ≤41 years (16 [18.2%]). RA was more common in women (84 [95.5%]) than in men (4 [4.5%]) – approximately 21:1-fold. Young adults had higher abnormal IL-10 than adult RA patients (OR = 3.72, p-value 0.044). Abnormal IL-17 (OR = 5.67, p-value 0.034) was found to be increased in young-adult RA patients. No association was observed between age and OPN and between the duration of disease and IL-10, IL-17, and OPN. Similarly, no association was noted between the types of treatment and IL-10, IL-17, and OPN, nor between IL-10, IL-17, OPN and liver parameters (AST, ALT, ALP, ALB, TP, and GGT).
 Conclusion: Pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines are not associated with abnormal liver functions, as has been demonstrated in RA patients.

Interleukin -21 gene RS 2221903 polymorphisms in rheumatoid arthritis patients

“…SNP rs 2221903 T>C located at position 122617 of translated sequence of IL-21 give rise to amino acid substitution (A/G) in signal peptide of IL-21 [6] . As regard age distribution, the distribution is statistically significant between three groups (p=0.017) and also statistically significant between group I and group II (p=0.013), this result agrees with research performed by Eltahir et al [13] who reported that, frequency of RA was higher among adult ages more than 31 years. This research disagreed with the research performed by Malinowski et al [14] who reported that there is no statistically significant variattion between investigated groups (P=0.8).…”