Concentration levels of IL-10 and TNFα cytokines in patients with human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA⁺ and DNA⁻ cervical lesions.

The present study was performed to assess the immune response in women with human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA⁺ and DNA⁻ cervical lesions. Eighty women with cervical lesions (age range = 25-70 years) and 20 healthy individuals (control group) were enrolled in the study. Lesions were cytologically classified into four groups: ASC-US (20), CINI (30), CINII-III (16), and cervical carcinoma (14) prior to HPV DNA detection. Estimation of interleukin (IL)-10 and tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α levels in cervical secretions and serum of the studied patients was performed utilizing ELISA. PCR screening kits were used to detect HPV DNA in cervical smears obtained from the studied cases with the different lesions. IL-10 levels in cervical secretions of HPV DNA⁺ were significantly greater than those from DNA⁻ patients (i.e., 88.73 vs 24.00 pg/ml) and from controls (i.e., 88.73 vs 8.27 pg/ml) and the levels were higher in DNA⁻ patients than in controls (i.e., 24.00 vs 8.27 pg/ml). In comparison, serum IL-10 levels in these patients did not significantly differ from control values (i.e., 13.69 vs 12.16 vs 9.99 pg/ml, respectively). TNFα levels in cervical secretions of the HPV DNA⁺ and DNA⁻ cases did not significantly differ from values for the controls (i.e., 12.18 vs 9.90 vs 7.90 pg/ml, respectively). Serum TNFα of these patients also did not differ significantly from controls (i.e., 11.59 vs 11.90 vs 10.83 pg/ml, respectively). The detected levels of IL-10 in cervical secretions of patients with HPV DNA⁺ lesions was significantly higher than in their sera, while secretion TNFα levels were nominally greater than sera values. Lastly, higher levels of IL-10 were observed in secretions of 10-14 (71.4%) patients who had progressive cervical lesions (HSIL and cervical cancer stages) who were HPV DNA⁺ than observed in 20 of 66 (30.0%) of DNA⁻ patients with similar progressive lesions. In general, the higher levels of IL-10 than of TNFα suggested a potential down-modulation of tumor-specific immune responses to HPV-infected lesions. This phenomenon appears to provide a tumor 'progressive' microenvironment in these particular patients.