Relation Between Interleukin 6 and Fever in Patients Undergoing Chemotherapy for Acute Leukemia

In order to probe the effect of interleukin 6 (IL - 6) in detecting infection in patients with acute leukemia. 44 episodes of febrile neutropenia in 28 patients undergoing chemotherapy for acute leukemia were studied. Plasma concentrations of IL-6 analysis was per formed with ELISA. The result showed that plasma lev-els of IL-6 in all patients with infection were increased. On the day of admission,the IL- 6 values were signifi-cantly higher in gram-negative bacteremias (median 1964 pg/ml; range 1053~ 20794 pg/ml) as compared with gram -positive bacteremias (median 283 pg/ml; range 91 ~ 1496 pg/ml, P0. 001). Patients with unexplained fever had significantly higher concentration of IL- 6 than patients with tumour-or therapy-related fever (P0. 005). The results of this study suggest that IL- 6 is an earlier and more sensitive indicator in detecting infec-tion in febrile neutropenic patients with acute leukemia. The measurement of IL- 6 level may be helpful for the assessment of fever in these patients.