The CCL28 levels are elevated in the serum of patients with irritable bowel syndrome and associated with the clinical symptoms.

Background: Inflammation and inflammatory mediators have been proposed to be key players in the pathobiology of Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS. The chemokine CCL28 plays a role in the trafficking of inflammatory cells into mucosal tissues. However, its levels in patients with IBS has not been yet elucidated.

Method: In this study, the levels of CCL28 were measured in the serum of 41 patients with IBS and 41 age- and gender-matched normal individuals using Elisa. Then, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was conducted to assess the diagnostic value of CCL28.

Results: Our data showed that the levels of CCL28 are significantly elevated in patients with IBS compared to the control donors. Moreover, we observed that the level of CCL28 is associated with many clinical symptoms such as constipation, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. The area under the ROC curve was 0.71 (95% confidential interval, 0.598-0.823), the sensitivity and specificity of CCL28 for the diagnosis of IBS patients were 68.3% and 70.7%, respectively with a cut off of 278.9 ng/mL.

Conclusions: We demonstrated that CCL28 is elevated in patients with IBS and correlates with clinical findings, indicating that CCL28 might be an appropriate biomarker for the diagnosis of IBS; however, further studies are necessary.