The impact of active and passive smoking on IL-6 serum levels for Iraqi healthy people

Cigarette smoking is responsible for respiratory tract disorder by inducing the inflammation response. Interleukin-6 is an essential inflammatory interleukine produced by macrophages and epithelial cells of the airways. Due to the critical gap in our knowledge about the secretion of IL-6 by healthy smokers, this study aimed to evaluate the serum level of interleukin-6 for healthy people due to active and passive smoking and compared them with healthy non-smokers. The research population included (49=n) healthy males aged from 22 to 28 years, classified into 3 groups: non-smokers (n =10), active smokers (n =29), and passive smokers (n =10). An ELISA kit(Peprotech Company) (USA) was used to quantify interleukin-6 in serum levels. The result has displayed significantly increased mean IL-6 serum levels for active smokers (552.7 pg/ml) and passive smokers (614.9 pg/ml) in comparison with non-smokers (332.8 pg/ml) at levels (P 0.01 ). Both passive and active smoking induce the secretion of IL-6 for healthy smokers significantly higher than non-smokers. So, little contact with cigarette smoke or passive smoking raises the pro-inflammatory IL-6 and active smoking. Keywords: Healthy active smoking, healthy passive smoking, IL-6