IL-6/IL-10 and IL-1?/IL-4 ratios associated with poor ovarian response in women undergoing in-vitro fertilization

The aim of this work was to evaluate whether serum cytokines levels are associated with ovarian response in IVF. 149 patients were included in a retrospective study. Cytokines IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, VEGF, IFN gamma, TNF alpha, IL-1 alpha, IL-1 beta, MCP-1 and EGF were measured by sandwich immunoassay previously to ovarian stimulation. Per-forming hierarchical cluster analysis, we observed that the antral follicle count, the total oocytes recovered and the MII recovered are grouped in the same cluster as the cytokines IL-2-4-6-10-1 alpha-1 beta, IFN gamma y TNF alpha. Then, we found that the ratio between IL and 6 and IL-10 was higher in low responder women (2.15 versus 1.55; p = 0.035). If we establish 0.9 as a cut-off for the IL-6/IL-10, we observed that above this value the risk of having a low response to ovarian stimulation was more than 3 times greater than below this value (22.9 % versus 6.0 %; p = 0.007). Also, the ratio IL-1 beta/IL-4 was higher in patients with normal or suboptimal response (0.62 versus 0.34; p = 0.034) and any patient with low response had a value greater than 0.7 (p = 0.003). As a conclusion, the IL-6/ IL-10 and IL-1 beta/IL-4 ratios showed differences between normoresponder women and patients with low ovarian response.