History

Background: SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, was first detected in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 in a cluster of patients with pneumonia. Accumulatively and until July 2022, Iraq registered 2,438,101 million COVID-19 cases and 25,304 deaths putting Iraq in third place among the Eastern Mediterranean Sea countries.The pathophysiological hallmark of COVID is closely associated with severe inflammatory responses; thereby, identifying the serum level of IL-6 may predict the progression of COVID-19 disease.

Materials and Methods: This study included ninety volunteered medical staff who worked in the Neurosurgery Teaching Hospital and were diagnosed with COVID-19 by PCR and accepted to give 5 ml of their blood. The medical staff was categorized into two groups and every group contain forty-five, we collected blood from the first group after one month (30 days) from the day of COVID-19 infection diagnosis while the second group after 4 months (120 days). we used a Quantikine IL-6 ELISA kit (catalogs numbers D6050 56050 PD6050) which is a sandwich ELISA and according to the manufacturer to estimate the serum levels of Human IL-6. Results: The independent two-sample Mann–Whitney test was used which showed that there was a significant decrease (P<0.05) in the IL-6 serum levels of the volunteered Medical staff after 4 months when it is compared to the one month Conclusion:IL6 serum levels decreased significantly after 120 days (4months) of COVID-19 infection.