Acute and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (AIDP and CIDP) are two types of immune-mediated neuropathies in which abnormal cellular or humoral immune responses have been observed. Although dysregulation of several cytokines has been detected in these disorders, expression of interleukin 38 (IL-38) has not yet been assessed in AIDP and CIDP. In the current study, we evaluated serum concentrations of this member of the IL-1 family of cytokines in 24 patients with CIDP, 13 patients with AIDP and 27 healthy subjects. We detected higher levels of IL-38 in CIDP patients compared with controls. When assessing study subgroups based on gender, there were no significant differences in IL-38 levels among the three female subgroups (P = 0.14). However, the difference among male subgroups was significant (P = 0.010). A Tukey test showed significant differences between male CIDP patients and male controls (P = 0.014). Considering the proposed anti-inflammatory role of IL-38, higher levels of this cytokine in CIDP might reflect the presence of a compensatory mechanism to reduce inflammatory processes in these patients. Further longitudinal assessment of this cytokine is need to test this hypothesis.

中文翻译：

---

评估获得性免疫介导的多发性神经病患者的IL-38水平。

急性和慢性炎性脱髓鞘性多发性神经病（AIDP和CIDP）是两种免疫介导的神经病，其中已观察到异常的细胞或体液免疫反应。尽管在这些疾病中已检测到几种细胞因子的失调，但尚未在AIDP和CIDP中评估白介素38（IL-38）的表达。在本研究中，我们评估了24名CIDP患者，13名AIDP患者和27名健康受试者的IL-1细胞因子家族成员的血清浓度。与对照组相比，我们在CIDP患者中检测到更高的IL-38水平。根据性别评估研究亚组时，三个女性亚组之间的IL-38水平无显着差异（P  = 0.14）。但是，男性亚组之间的差异很大（P  = 0.010）。Tukey测试显示，男性CIDP患者和男性对照之间存在显着差异（P  = 0.014）。考虑到建议的IL-38的抗炎作用，CIDP中这种细胞因子的较高水平可能反映了减少这些患者炎症过程的补偿机制的存在。需要对该细胞因子进行进一步的纵向评估以检验该假设。