The effect of infliximab on circulating levels of leptin, adiponectin and resistin in patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Background Tumour necrosis factor a is a critical mediator of inflammation-related altered metabolism in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), possibly through its interaction with adipokines, which play an important role in IBD. Infliximab is a well established antitumour necrosis factor a treatment in IBD. Aim and methods We studied serum levels of leptin, adiponectin and resistin in 20 113101 patients before and after infliximab treatment using commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The results were correlated with alterations of disease activity, BMI and C-reactive protein. Results Infliximab induced clinical response or remission in 18 out of 20 treated IBD patients. Mean serum-leptin levels were 4.6 +/- 0.5 and 5.1 +/- 0.5 ng/ml (P=0.41), mean serum-adiponectin levels were 10513.9 +/- 1216.9 and 9653.5 +/- 1031.5 ng/ml (P=0.36) and mean serum-resistin levels were 26.3 +/- 4.1 and 13.9 +/- 1.4 ng/ml (P=0.004), before and after infliximab treatment, respectively. No significant correlation between the changes of BMI, C-reactive protein or the clinical indices of activity and alterations of the examined adipokines was found. Conclusions Serum levels of leptin and adiponectin had no significant alterations, whereas serum-resistin levels are significantly decreased after infliximab therapy in IBD patients, suggesting a possible proinflammatory status for resistin in IBD and a role as a marker of successful therapy.