Serum IL-23 levels in patients with vitiligo

Background and Design: Interleukin-23 (IL-23) is a cytokine which is believed to have an important role in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases. Therefore, it can be used as a target molecule in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. The aim of our study was to determine serum IL-23 levels in patients with vitiligo to understand their possible roles in the disease etiology and to compare the results with the healthy controls. Materials and Methods: Fifty-one patients, who applied to the dermatology outpatient clinic and were diagnosed with vitiligo clinically and by wood lamp inspection, were enrolled in our study. Thirty-six age- and sex-matched healthy subjects were also enrolled as the control group. Serum IL-23 levels were studied in peripheral venous blood samples. Statistical analyses were made by SPSS version 16.0 for Windows. Results: Vitiligo group and control group were similar in terms of age and sex. Generalized type vitiligo was detected in 27 (52,9%), whereas focal, acrofacial, segmental and universal forms were detected in 13 (25,5%), 5 (9,8%), 3 (5,9%) and 3 (5,9%) of the patients, respectively. Mean serum IL-23 values were not significantly different between patient and control group (p=0.606). We also showed that serum IL-23 levels did not show any statistically significant difference in patients according to the size of the body surface area involved, involvement of the anogenital area, clinical manifestation, duration of disease and gender respectively (p=0.904, p=0.335, p=0.354, p=0.317, p=0.729, respectively). Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first study investigating IL-23 levels in vitiligo. According to our findings, IL-23 level was not higher in vitiligo patients. Because of the small number of subjects involved in our study, further studies involving larger groups are needed to verify our results in IL-23 levels in vitiligo patients.