The levels of vitamins and cytokines in serum of elderly patients with community‐acquired pneumonia: A case–control study

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a common disease with high incidence rate and mortality among the elderly. This study aims to explore the association between vitamins, cytokines, and CAP infected by different pathogens in Handan First Hospital. METHODS: The subjects of this study were elderly patients with community‐acquired pneumonia in Handan First Hospital and healthy elderly people in the community from February 2018 to December 2019. The study include 234 CAP patients and 180 healthy elderly people. The differences between the healthy and CAP groups were analyzed by blood routine test, urine routine test, Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC‐MS/MS) detection of vitamin level, and Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) detection of cytokine level. Sputum culture was used to detect pathogens. RESULTS: According to our results, there was no significant difference in the contents of vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and vitamin C in serum between the healthy and CAP elderly. However, compared with the control group, the levels of serum cytokines of IL‐2, IL‐17, and TGF‐β in the CAP patients were significantly increased. In addition, IL‐17 was positively correlated with white blood cells, neutrophils, platelet/lymphocyte ratio and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio of CAP patients, and negatively correlated with lymphocytes. The four pathogens with the highest positive rates were Streptococcus pneumoniae, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Mycoplasma pneumoniae and H. influenza. In patients with S. pneumoniae infection, the IL‐2, IL‐17, and TGF‐β levels were significantly higher than the levels in the control group; IL‐17 was also significantly increased in the serum of patients infected with M. pneumoniae, K. pneumoniae, and H. influenza. CONCLUSIONS: There is no direct association between vitamins in serum and community acquired pneumonia (CAP). However, the cytokines are closely related to the clinical indicators and pathogens of CAP patients, which can provide references for the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of CAP patients.