IL6 and Sciatica: Burke et al. studied the production of inflammatory mediators in disc tissues in a similar group of patients [110] and compared the levels of IL-6, IL-8, and PGE2 in their disc tissue from patients undergoing discectomy for sciatica with those from patients undergoing fusion for discogenic low back pain which showed that more IL-6, IL-8, and PGE2 are produced by discs from patients with low back pain compared with discs from patients with sciatica.