Sochett E, et al. - In a study population comprising adolescents with and without-Type I Diabetes (T1D), researchers intended to assess the interaction between systemic inflammation and vascular function. They found that the cytokine-chemokine signature in early T1D, prior to the development of arterial disease, was significantly different from that seen in healthy controls. Possible relevance of this was indicated with respect to pathophysiology, risk determination and detection of target cytokines-chemokines for intervention in T1D.

Methods

• Researchers studied 51 subjects from their observational cohort of adolescents with T1D (JDRF-CCTN), and 59 healthy controls (HC).
• Using Human 41-Plex Array, they quantified serum cytokines-chemokines.
• Furthermore, they measured vascular function by Flow Mediated Dilatation (FMD), Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) and Blood Pressure (BP).
• They used Factor Analysis to determine pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine-chemokine factors, which were then correlated with vascular outcomes.

Results

• Researchers identified 3 pro-inflammatory factors in HC and 3 in TID, and a single anti-inflammatory factor in both groups.
• They observed a positive correlation (r = 0.33; p=0.01) between control proinflammatory Factor 1 and systolic BP and a negative correlation between control proinflammatory Factor 3(r = -0.29; p=0.02) and diastolic BP in HC.
• Findings also demonstrated a positive correlation of control proinflammatory Factor 2 with PWV.
• It was also noted that in TID subjects, no correlations existed between any of the pro-inflammatory factors and the vascular measurements.
• Moreover, in either HC or T1D, no correlations were evident between the anti-inflammatory factors and BP, FMD and PWV.
• In T1D, significantly higher levels of pro-inflammatory analytes, EGF, GRO, PDGF-BB, PDGF-AA and sCD40L were reported.