Assessment of Interferon Gamma and Interleukin-10 m-RNA Expression in Peripheral Blood From Renal Transplanted Patients with Chronic Allograft Nephropathy by Real Time Polymerase Chain Reaction

Background: The current study was performed to investigate the potential biomarkers of IFN-γ and IL-10 that can be used to detect Chronic Allograft Nephropathy. Methods: Among 52 patients with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) who had renal transplantation and were followed up in Ismailia University Hospital. Twenty six patients with Chronic Allograft Nephropathy and 26 (non-rejector) patients were recruited into the study. Serum gamma interferon and interleukin -10 were measured in all patients with the calculation of interferon gamma / interleukin-10 ratios. We used multivariate analysis, regression analysis and the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve in our statistics. Results: According to ROC curve analysis of the RT-PCR of IFN-γ and IL- 10; we were able to distinguish non-rejection and Chronic Allograft Nephropathy with optimal cutoff point of IFN-γ (=6.9) and a specificity of 96.2%. The optimal cutoff point of IL-10 was (=0.4) with a specificity of 92.3. Our investigation further revealed that IL-10 and IFN-γ were significantly elevated in patients with Chronic Allograft Nephropathy with high AUC values compared to non- rejectors. Conclusion: In conclusion we found that IFN-γ, IL-10 and IFN-γ/IL-10 ratio might provide useful surrogate markers for renal transplant outcome. In kidney transplant patients with renal rejection, the presence of cytokines reflects renal damage and could be a useful method in the diagnosis of renal rejection.