Preoperative serum interleukin-18 level as a postoperative prognostic marker in patients with gastric carcinoma

Role of serum interleukin-18 as a prognostic factor in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

AIM: To determine whether serum interleukin-18 (IL-18) levels correlated with clinicopathologic features and prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

METHODS: Serum IL-18, IL-6 and IL-12 levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) from 70 patients with HCC and 10 healthy controls.

RESULTS: Serum IL-18, IL-6 and IL-12 levels of patients with HCC were significantly higher that those of the controls. The levels of IL-18 correlated significantly with the presence of venous invasion and advanced tumor stages classified by Okuda’s criteria. Patients with high serum IL-18 levels (≥ 10⁵ pg/mL) had a poorer survival than those with low serum IL-18 levels (< 10⁵ pg/mL) (4 and 11 mo, respectively, P = 0.015). Multivariate analyses showed that serum IL-18 level, but not IL-6 and IL-12 levels, was a significant and independent prognostic factor of survival.

CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that serum IL-8 may a useful biological marker of tumor invasiveness and an independent prognostic factor of survival for patients with HCC. Thus, the detailed mechanisms of IL-18 involving in tumor progression should be further investigated.

Expression and significance of intratumoral interleukin-12 and interleukin-18 in human gastric carcinoma

AIM: To explore the effect of intratumoral expressions of interleukin-12 (IL-12) and interleukin-18 (IL-18) on clinical features, angiogenesis and prognosis of gastric carcinoma.

METHODS: The expressions of IL-12 and IL-18 from 50 samples of gastric cancer tissue were analyzed by immunohistochemistry, and microvessel density (MVD) was determined with microscopic imaging analysis system.

RESULTS: The positive expression rates of IL-12 and IL-18 were 44% (22/50) and 26% (13/50), respectively. IL-12 was significantly associated with pathologic differentiation, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and TNM stage, and IL-18 was closely related to distant metastasis. Intratumoral IL-12 and IL-18 expressions were not statistically related to MVD scoring. IL-12-positive patients survived significantly longer than those with IL-12-negative tumors, but there was no significant difference between IL-18-positive patients and IL-18-negative ones. The multivariate analysis with Cox proportional hazard model revealed IL-12, MVD and T stage were independent prognostic factors.

CONCLUSION: The positive expressions of IL-12 and IL-18 can play an important role in progression and metastasis of gastric cancer, and IL-12 might be an independent factor of poor prognosis in gastric carcinoma.