ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Chronic inflammation is linked to disorders of obesity, insulin resistance and DM2. This reflects as increase in proinflammatory cytokines including IL-6. In Nigeria, there is no study that has measured IL-6 in diabetics, in spite of having the highest number of diabetics in Africa. METHODS: The twenty-eight DM2 patients and 13 controls recruited for this study had their BP, BMI, waist circumference (WC) and waist-hip-ratio (WHR) measured. They also had fasting plasma IL-6, fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol (TC), Triglyceride (Tg), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), urea, creatinine, aspartate transaminases (AST), alanine transferases (ALT), total protein (TP) and albumin determined. RESULTS: Mean age was 51.83 years ± 13.28, with diabetics significantly older than controls (56.61 yrs. ± 9.62 vs. 41.54 years ± 14.53) P < 0.05. The mean IL-6 in diabetics (194.77 pg/ml ± 166.16) was significantly higher than controls' (26.29 pg/ml ± 6.65) at p ≤ 0.01. No significant difference in mean BMI in diabetics and controls. But WC and WHR of diabetics (100.75 cm ± 18.47; 1.01 ± 0.14) were significant higher than in controls (88.77 cm ± 13.36; 0.88 ± 0.07) at p ≤ 0.05 (WC; p value 0.043) and p ≤ 0.01(WHR; p value 0.002). Among diabetics, there were significant correlations between IL-6 and Tg (p<0.01, r = 0.007**),IL-6 and LDL-C (p<0.05, r = 0.02*), IL-6 and AST (p<0.05, r = 0.041*r4) and IL-6 and ALT (p<0.01, r = 0.004**) CONCLUSION: Elevated IL-6 in DM2 patients in South West Nigeria correlates with liver transaminases and not increased markers of central adiposity.