Systemic IL-26 correlates with improved asthma control in allergic
children with asthma
Given that IL-26 is elevated systemically in dog allergen-sensitized
children with asthma, we considered whether IL-26 may be a marker of
disease severity in asthma. To assess this, we compared the systemic
concentration of IL-26 with subjective symptom assessment questionnaires
and objective spirometry values. Interestingly, we observed that
systemic IL-26 values correlate with increasing, rather than decreasing,
ACT scores (Fig. 4 ). However, we did not find any statistically
significant correlations between IL-26 and either AQLQ scores or
spirometry values, including FEV1 (data not shown).
Despite a lack of correlation between systemic IL-26 and FEV1, we were
interested in whether IL-26 levels might also correlate with other
objective markers of asthma severity in a similar manner to the
subjective correlation to ACT scores. To assess this, we converted each
subject’s daily inhaled corticosteroid dose to the equivalent dose of
beclomethasone and compared this with their respective systemic IL-26
concentration. We discovered that increasing systemic IL-26 values
correlate with decreasing inhaled daily corticosteroid dose
(Fig. 5A ).