Interleukin 17 is an important pathogenicity gene in pediatric sepsis: HAN et al.

OBJECTIVE: Sepsis represents a complex disease with the dysregulated inflammatory response. The purpose of this study is to explore the role of interleukin 17 (IL-17, also known as IL-17A) in the occurrence and development of pediatric sepsis. METHODS: We established the sepsis neonatal rat model with the method of intraperitoneal injection of Escherichia coli (E coli). At each target time point, we got the blood from heart after anesthetizing animals, and the lung and liver tissues were fixed in formalin. Immunohistochemistry and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay assay was used to analyze the expression of IL-17A in the lung/liver and plasma respectively. A public data set of neonatal sepsis gene microarray was used to verify our result, and explore main functions of IL-17A in sepsis. RESULTS: The expression levels of IL-17A in the plasma, lung and liver gradually increased with the extension of the experimental time in sepsis group, and were significantly higher than control group at 4 hours after injection of E coli (P < 0.01). In our study, we found the levels of IL-17A mRNA in pediatric sepsis group were significantly higher than control group, which is consistent with the neonatal rat septicemia model. In addition, through the functional (GO) enrichment analysis, we found the genes associated with IL-17A in pediatric sepsis are mainly enriched in the functions of immune response and cell membrane formation. CONCLUSION: IL-17A might be a potential therapeutic target for pediatric sepsis.