Evaluation of significantly changed chemokine factors of idiopathic granulomatous mastitis in non‐puerperal patients

Abstract Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM), a recurrent inflammation disease of the non‐lactating breast, has had an increasing clinical morbidity rate in recent years, and its complicated symptoms and unclear etiology make it challenging to treat. This rare benign inflammatory breast disease, centered on the lobules, represents the most challenging type of non‐puerperal mastitis (NPM), also known as non‐lactating mastitis. In this study, patients diagnosed with IGM (M, n = 23) were recruited as cases, and patients with benign control breast disease (C, n = 17) were enrolled as controls. Cytokine microarray detection measured and analyzed the differentially expressed cytokine factors between IGM and control patients. Then, we verified the mRNA and protein expression levels of the significantly changed cytokine factors using Q‐RT‐PCR, ELISA, western blot, and IHC experiments. The cytokine factor expression levels significantly changed compared to the control group. We observed a significant increase between IGM and control patients in cytokine factors expression, such as interleukin‐1β (IL‐1β), monokine induced by gamma interferon (MIG), macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)‐1α, MIP‐1β, tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 (TNF RII). Then, we verified the expression of these top five dysregulated factors in both mRNA and protein levels. Our results demonstrated the cytokine map in IGM and indicated that several cytokines, especially chemokines, were associated with and significantly dysregulated in IGM tissues compared to the control group. The chemokine factors involved might be essential in developing and treating IGM. These findings would be helpful for a better understanding of IGM and offer valuable insights for devising novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies.