MOHAMMED A. AL-SAADI, IFADKERIMABD AL-SHIBLY AND MUSTAFA JAWAD AL-IMARI
Abstract
Tuberculosis (TB) is an airborne disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) that usually affects the lungs and leading to severe coughing, fever, and chest pains and responsible on many morbidities and mortalities. The immunity against this pathogen has an important role especially that of cytokine, such as interleukin-17 (IL-17) which acts as a regulatory immune response to overcome infection. To evaluate the serum levelof IL-17 in pulmonary tuberculosis patients (PTB) and control. A case-control study with 60PTB patients, which visit the chest and respiratory disease center in Babylon province, compared with 60 control. The serum level of IL-17was measured by Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) from Elabscience®, USA. The demographic characteristics showed that males were more exposed to infection (57%) with median age 46 years compared with females (43%) with median age 32 years, most of the cases were exposed at the prison or due to contact with family relative restrained in prison person. The cases in rural regions were higher (75%) compared with urban cases (25%). The median serum level of IL-17 in PTB was 207.42pg/mL compared with 303.37 pg/mL for the control group. The t-value was -2.56268 and the p-value was 0.000873. The result was significant at (p < 0.05). The male gender, prison exposure, rural areas and low serum level of IL-17 are considered candidate factors of PTB infection.