Soluble interleukin-2 receptor in patients with vitiligo

ABSTRACT

Vitiligo is a hypopigmentary dennatosis of probable autoiminune origin. The disease may be the consequence of an autoimmune response of cytotoxic T lymphocytes against melanocyte antigens. The measurement of soluble interiuekin-2 receptor [s IL-2R] in serum has been shown to be useful in monitoring, in vivo, the immune activation, and the elevation of sIL-2R is correlated with T cell mediated immune diseases. In order to study the role of sIL-2R in the pathogenesis of vitiligo, the level of sIL-2R was measured in the serum of 39 patients with vitiligo and 20 normal controls using the method of sandwich ELISA. The patients were divided according to the type of the disease into 3 groups; generalized type [19 patients], focal type [12 patients] and segmental type [8 patients]. There was a highly significant increase in sIL-2R level in patients with vitiligo [414.8 +/- 115.1 U/ml] compared with that of the controls [274.36 +/- 30.1 U/ml, P = 0.0001]. There was no significant difference among sIL-2R levels according to sex, either in patients with vitligo or controls. According to the clinical types of vitiligo, sIL-2R levels in generalized and focal types showed highly significant results compared to the control group, while in the segmental type, the level of sIL-2R was not highly significant as the other two types. As regards to the activity of the disease there was a highly significant difference [P = 0.0001] of sIL-2R level between the patients with progressive vitiligo lesions in relation to patients with stable lesions. As regard to the duration of the disease, there was a highly significant increase of sIL-2R levels in patients of less than one year duration [P =0.001] compared to the patients with vitiligo of more than one year duration. From the results of this study, it was noticed that the level of sEL-2R was significantly increased in generalized and focal types of vitiligo than the segmental type and this indicates that the activation of T lymphocytes would be an important component in the pathogenesis of the former 2 types of vitiligo. Also, the results showed that assessing sIL-2R may be significant in estimating the progression of the disease