Elevated Levels of Serum Interleukin-12p40 May Reflect Disease Severity of Patients with Chronic Congestive Heart Failure

Interleukin(IL)-12p40 is a linchpin immunoregulatory cytokine to promote the development of a Th1 type immune response. To examine whether serum levels of IL-12p40 are increased in patients with CHF and to determine whether a correlation exists between disease severity and serum levels of IL-12p40 of patients with chronic CHF, we assessed the serum levels of IL-12p 40 in 56 patients with CHF (LVEF < 40%, NYHA II-III) and age-matched 20 healthy volunteers using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Results: The serum levels of IL-12p40 were significantly higher in CHF patients than in healthy volunteer (81.3 ± 8.1 vs 25.7 ± 2.9 ng/ml, p < 0.01). The serum levels of IL-12p40 showed significant positive correlations with NYHA functional class, serum levels of tumor necrotic factor-alpha, IL-1beta, IL-6, and BNP in patients with CHF. Cardiac death and rehospitalization due to worsening heart failure occurred more frequently in a high serum levels of IL-12p40 group (>54.0 ng/ml, n = 28) of CHF patients than in a low serum levels of IL-12p40 group (<54.0 ng/ml, n = 28) for a mean follow-up period of 27.5 months. Furthermore, serially measured serum levels of IL-12p40 decreased significantly along with improvement in NYHA class under medication with carvedilol in 12 patients. Conclusions: Our data showed that the circulating IL-12p40 levels may relate to severity of patients with heart failure syndrome.