ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1680530
Serum interleukin-40 increases in anti-AchR antibody-positive myasthenia gravis and correlates with disease activity
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Neurology, Tianjin Huanhu Hospital, Tianjin, China
- 2Department of Neurology, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
- 3Department of Neurology, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital Airport Site, Tianjin, China
- 4Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
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Background:Interleukin-40 (IL-40), as an immune regulatory factor discovered in recent years, mainly plays a role in B-cell-related immune responses and is involved in the pathological processes of various inflammatory diseases, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases. However, its role in myasthenia gravis (MG) has rarely been reported. Methods:We used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA)to measure the serum IL-40 levels in 58 MG patients and 55 healthy controls, and conducted a detailed analysis of the clinical data. Results:The serum IL-40 level in MG patients was significantly higher than that in healthy controls(P < 0.0001). After immunotherapy, the serum IL-40 level in MG patients significantly decreased(P < 0.0001). In MG, the IL-40 level of severe patients was significantly higher than that of mild patients(P < 0.0001). The ROC curve determined that the cut-off value for distinguishing IL-40 in MG from healthy controls was 15.63 pg/ml, with an AUC of 0.846 (95% CI: 0.773–0.919), 74.1% specificity, and 85.5% sensitivity. Conclusions: The serum IL-40 level in MG patients is elevated and is correlated with the severity of the disease. High levels of IL-40 may serve as a specific indicator for monitoring disease activity, which supports its potential as a non-invasive biomarker for disease monitoring.
Keywords: Myasthenia Gravis, interleukin-40, biomaker, human, ELISA
Received: 06 Aug 2025; Accepted: 20 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jia, Shao, Tan, Liu, Zhang, Zhao and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Li Yang, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital, Tianjin, China
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