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. 2019 Dec 18;12(1):816.
doi: 10.1186/s13104-019-4855-2.

Gulf War Illness-associated increases in blood levels of interleukin 6 and C-reactive protein: biomarker evidence of inflammation

Tammy A Butterick  1   2 , Janeen H Trembley  1   3   4 , Laura L Hocum Stone  1   5 , Clemma J Muller  6 , Rebecca R Rudquist  1 , Ronald R Bach  7   8
Affiliations

Gulf War Illness-associated increases in blood levels of interleukin 6 and C-reactive protein: biomarker evidence of inflammation

Tammy A Butterick et al. BMC Res Notes. .

Abstract

Objective: Gulf War Illness is a chronic multisymptom disorder severely impacting the health and well-being of many Veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Symptoms that define the disease include pain, fatigue, mood and memory impairments, gastrointestinal problems, lung disorders, and skin rashes. In our previous biomarker study, we discovered Gulf War Illness-associated proinflammatory blood biomarkers. Therefore, we hypothesized that chronic inflammation causes the symptoms that define this disorder. Testing the chronic inflammation hypothesis is the objective of this study.

Results: The biomarker fingerprint of Gulf War Illness is the end-product of a cascade of proinflammatory cytokine signals. In particular, the observed increase in C-reactive protein predicts a corresponding increase in interleukin 6, the cytokine that stimulates hepatocytes to produce C-reactive protein. Therefore, in this study we measured potential upstream cytokine signals in plasma samples from Gulf War Veterans. As predicted, a positive correlation between interleukin 6 and C-reactive protein was observed.

Keywords: Biomarkers; C-reactive protein; Case–control study; Chronic inflammation; Chronic multisymptom illness; Gulf War Illness; Interleukin 6; Proinflammatory cytokines.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Plasma IL-6 versus Plasma CRP. The scatter plot represents the plasma IL-6 and CRP levels for each subject. The lines are the linear regression determinations for the GWI+ and GWI− groups. R2 values for the regressions were 0.22GWI+ and 0.15GWI−
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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