Postmortem cytokine levels and severity of traumatic injuries

The relationship between postmortem serum cytokine levels and severity of traumatic injuries was studied. The postmortem serum levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) of 131 victims who died from traumatic injury were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method and compared with scores of total abbreviated injury scale (total AIS) and injury severity score (ISS) calculated from detailed autopsy reports. A significant positive correlation was observed between IL-6 and total AIS (rs=0.4508, p<0.0001), between IL-6 and ISS (rs=0.3337, p<0.0001), between IL-8 and total AIS (rs=0.6593, p<0.0001), and between IL-8 and ISS (rs=0.5305, p<0.0001). The significant correlation between cytokine levels and anatomical traumatic severity indicated that the cytokine levels are useful objective indexes of traumatic severity. In addition, the total AIS is a suitable marker to evaluate traumatic severity as the coefficient of correlation between the cytokine levels and the total AIS was higher than that for the ISS values.