Author: Mortada El-Sayed Ahmed
30-40% of infertile couples are diagnosed as unexplained infertility, and, failure of implantation is claimed to be the etiology behind many cases diagnosed as unexplained infertility. Emerging evidence links deficiency and excess of Interleukin-6 (IL-6) to reproductive impairment; this leads to the interest in how IL-6 contributes to fertility. This is a case-control study of total 80 women; 40 women with primary unexplained infertility and 40 control fertile women to compare mid-secretory endometrial IL-6 in normal fertile women and women with unexplained infertility. Mid-luteal endometrial IL-6 was significantly higher in the control group (41.6 ± 19.8 pg/dl) than in infertile group (15.5 ± 5.5 pg/dl) (P < 0.0001, CI 95%; -32.57 to -19.63). Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed the best cutoff value of >22.6 pg/dl for discrimination between fertile and infertile women. In conclusion, Women with unexplained infertility show lower levels of mid-luteal endometrial IL-6 when compared to fertile women. This implies that IL-6 might have an important role in human embryo implantation.
Keywords
Infertility, endometrial, Interleukin-6, immunoglobulin
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