AUTHOR=Fu Gui , Zhang Wenjing , Dai Jing , Liu Jieke , Li Fei , Wu Dongsheng , Xiao Yuan , Shah Chandan , Sweeney John A. , Wu Min , Lui Su 

TITLE=Increased Peripheral Interleukin 10 Relate to White Matter Integrity in Schizophrenia

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neuroscience

VOLUME=13

YEAR=2019

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.00052

DOI=10.3389/fnins.2019.00052

ISSN=1662-453X

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> Schizophrenia is characterized by the disruption of microstructural white matter (WM) integrity, while the pathogenesis remains unclear. Inflammation has been associated with the WM pathology in schizophrenia. Interleukin 10 (IL-10) has been proven to be related to schizophrenia in both animal and human models. The aim of this study was to explore whether peripheral IL-10 was associated with microstructural WM integrity in schizophrenia.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> A total of 47 patients with schizophrenia (SZ) and 49 healthy controls (HC) underwent diffusion tensor imaging and venous blood sampling. Tract-based spatial statistics was conducted to explore the differences in fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (RD), mean diffusivity (MD), and axial diffusivity (AD) between patients and controls. A quantitative chemiluminescence assay was performed to measure peripheral IL-10 levels. General linear regression analysis using a stepwise method was applied to examine the relationship between peripheral IL-10 and diffusion measures.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> Compared with the HC, peripheral IL-10 levels were higher and a significant reduction of FA and AD, and increase of RD and MD were observed in SZ (corrected <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.05). A regression analysis revealed that peripheral IL-10 was negatively correlated with FA in the right posterior thalamic radiation and left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus, in SZ (β = -0.51, <italic>p</italic> = 0.01; β = -0.47, <italic>p</italic> = 0.02, respectively) but not in HC (β = -0.01, <italic>p</italic> = 0.95; β = -0.003, <italic>p</italic> = 0.98, respectively), and the differences in regression curves were significant (<italic>z</italic> = 2.50, <italic>p</italic> = 0.01; <italic>z</italic> = 2.37, <italic>p</italic> = 0.02, respectively). IL-10 was negatively connected with MD in the right parietal arcuate fasciculus (β = -0.40, <italic>p</italic> = 0.048) and body of the corpus callosum (β = -0.43, <italic>p</italic> = 0.03) in SZ, while not in HC. The magnitude of correlation in the patient and control group was different (<italic>z</italic> = 2.48, <italic>p</italic> = 0.01 and <italic>z</italic> = 2.61, <italic>p</italic> &lt; 0.01, respectively). In addition, IL-10 was positively correlated with RD in the right parietal arcuate fasciculus in patients (β = 0.45, <italic>p</italic> = 0.04) but not in HC (β = 0.26, <italic>p</italic> = 0.94), but the correlation coefficients were not significant (<italic>z</italic> = 0.98, <italic>p</italic> = 0.32).</p><p><bold>Conclusion:</bold> Our findings demonstrated that elevated peripheral IL-10 levels were associated with the disruption of microstructural WM integrity in schizophrenia, supporting the notion that inflammation plays a regulatory role in the pathology of microstructural WM and is associated with schizophrenia.</p>