The Relationship Between Blood Interleukin-10 and Cardiovascular Mortality and All-Cause Mortality After Kidney Transplantation

BACKGROUND: Circulating interleukin (IL)-10 is associated with adverse cardiovascular events in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Whether IL-10 predicts cardiovascular and all-cause mortality after kidney transplantation (KT) is unknown. METHODS: The association between plasma IL-10 and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality was analyzed in a prospective cohort, which included 418 stable kidney transplant recipients, at a median of 3.6 (range=1.2–8.4) years after transplantation. Multivariate Cox regression models were performed to adjusting related confounding factors. RESULTS: Median level of IL-10 in KT patient was 22.3 pg/mL. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that serum levels IL-10 were significantly and independently associated with cardiovascular mortality after adjusting for age, gender, BMI, current smoker, current drinker, cause of kidney disease, systolic and diastolic BP, laboratory indexes and medication (HR=1.26, 95% CI 1.19–2.08, P-trend<0.001). The multivariate Cox analysis also suggested that serum levels IL-10 were independently associated with all-cause mortality (HR=1.25, 95% CI 1.11–1.8, P-trend=0.023) after controlling these same related confounding factors. Sensitivity and stratified analysis showed that the significant association can be affected by history of acute rejection. CONCLUSION: Plasma IL-10 is independently and significant associated with cardiovascular and all-cause mortality after kidney transplantation. The significant association is independent of cardiovascular risk factors and other related confounding factors.