High plasma levels of soluble ST2 but not its ligand IL-33 is associated with severe forms of pediatric dengue.
Identification of early determinants of dengue disease progression, which could potentially enable individualized patient care are needed at present times. Soluble ST2 (sST2) has been recently reported to be elevated in the serum of children older than 2 years old and adults with dengue infection and it was correlated with secondary infections as well as with severe presentations of the disease. The mechanism by which secreted ST2 is linked to severe dengue and plasma leakage remains unclear. One possibility is that IL-33 ligand may be elevated, contributing to membrane bound ST2 as part of the immune activation in dengue infection. We determined plasma levels of sST2 and the ligand IL-33 in 66 children with acute secondary dengue infections clinically classified using the guidelines of the World Health Organization, 2009. Dengue infection showed significant increases in cytokines IL-12p70, IL-10, IL-8, IL-6, IL-1β and TNFα measured by flow cytometry based assay compared to uninfected individuals. In contrast, IL-33 levels remained unchanged between infected and uninfected individuals. The levels of sST2 positively correlated with values of IL-6 and IL-8 and inversely correlated with number of median value of platelet levels. In addition to circulating cytokine positive correlations we found that sST2 and isoenzyme creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB), a marker of myocardial muscle damage present in severe dengue cases were associated. Our pediatric study concluded that in dengue infections sST2 elevation does not involve concomitant changes of IL-33 ligand. We propose a study to assess its value as a predictor factor of disease severity.