Cytokine concentration in peripheral blood and synovium in patients with deforming arthritis of the knee with regard to defect size of the medial tibial condyle

Cytokine imbalance is important for pathogenesis of osteoarthritis. Objective To assess serum and synovium cytokine level in patients with deforming osteoarthritis of the knee joint depending on the size of the medial tibial condyle defect. Material and methods Immunoenzyme technique was used to measure cytokine concentration in peripheral blood and synovium of 74 patients with grade III gonarthritis. Results Serum concentration of IL-1β and IL-4 were significantly higher in presence of small, moderate and extensive condylar defects than that in the control group. Concentration of IL-8, IL-10, TNFα was higher in absence of the defect than that in the controls and there was no statistically significant differences in the groups with small and moderate defects. The highest concentration of the cytokines was observed in the group with defects sized more than 10 mm. Synovium concentration of IL-1β, IL-10 was minimum in absence of condylar defect and there was a tendency of increased concentration with a defect measuring less than 5 mm and it substantially increased with defects measuring more than 6 mm. Synovium concentration of IL-8 was higher than that of the serum but there was no statistically significant differences between IL-6 and synovium TNFα concentration. Conclusions The magnitude of the condylar defect was shown to influence over synovium and serum cytokine concentration. Concentration of both cytokines was the highest with condylar defect sized more than 50 % of the condylar area and 6 mm deep.