• Qingqing Lu, Zhenhua Zhu, Chaochao Tan, Hui Zhou, Yan Hu, Ge Shen, Pan Zhu, Gang Yang, and Xiaobing Xie.
• The First Clinical College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China.
• Int. J. Clin. Pract. 2021 Sep 1; 75 (9): e14462.

Background And PurposeStudies have shown that some cytokines in COVID-19 patients were elevated. This study aims to assess whether IL-10, IL-1β, IL-6, MCP-1, TNF-α, IP-10 and IL-4 serve as potential diagnostic biomarkers of COVID-19.MethodsThe above serum cytokines in COVID-19 patients and non-COVID-19 patients were detected by ELISA and SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG were detected by the chemiluminescence method. The independent-sample Mann-Whitney U test was utilised to compare cytokine levels in different groups and courses, the Levene T-test and T'-test were utilised to compare they in different genders and the Spearman correlation test was utilised to analyse the correlation between the cytokine levels with ages and SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgM.ResultsSerum levels of IL-10, IL-1β, MCP-1, TNF-α and IL-4 in COVID-19 patients were significantly higher than those in non-COVID-19 patients, while IL-6 were only significantly higher than in healthy people, IP-10 were significantly lower than in other diseases patients. AUCs of COVID-19 diagnosed by IL-10, IL-1β, IL-6, MCP-1, TNF-α, IP-10 and IL-4 were 0.735, 0.775, 0.595, 0.821, 0.848, 0.38 and 0.682, respectively. In the COVID-19 patients' serum, the levels of IL-10 and MCP-1 of male were noticeably higher than those of female, and all cytokines were significantly positively correlated with age, IL-1β and IL-4 were significantly negatively correlated with SARS-CoV-2 IgM, while IL-10, IL-1β, IL-6, TNF- and IP-10 were significantly negatively correlated with SARS-CoV-2 IgG. IL-10 on 43-56 days was significantly lower than at 29-42 days, TNF-α at 15-42 days was significantly higher than at 0-14 days, IP-10 at 0-14 days was the highest and IL-4 at 29-42 days was significantly higher than at 0-14 days.ConclusionsThe detection of IL-10, IL-1 β, IL-6, MCP-1, TNF-α and IL-4 would assist the clinical study of COVID-19, and IP-10 may be the cytokine of early elevation in COVID-19 patients.© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

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