Evaluation of cytokines as diagnostic and therapeutic indicators for recurrent aphthous stomatitis: A statistical study

Increasing evidence indicates that inflammatory cytokines are involved in the path-ogenesis of recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS). A wide range of over ten cytokines in periph-eral blood of RAS patients have been investigated in different studies. Yet, which of the ones are the most prominent indicators contributed for the process of RAS are uncertain. Herein, a total of 16 eligible case-control studies including 1051 cases of RAS and 616 health controls were summarized. The bubble chart analysis showed that the most prominent cytokines for RAS were interleukin (IL)-6 (646 cases, 308 controls), TNF-a (498 cases, 298 controls), and IL-2 (371 cases, 264 controls). On the other hand, 9 studies on cytokines as therapeutic indica-tors of RAS were identified. The effect of levamisole and thalidomide on cytokines mainly were IL-6, TNF-cc, and IL-8. Collectively, an optimum panel of IL-6, TNF-cc, and IL-2 maybe serve as the potential significant indicators for RAS investigations. 2022 Association for Dental Sciences of the Republic of China. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).