Tangkijvanich Pisit, Thong-Ngam Duangporn, Mahachai Varocha, Theamboonlers Apiradee, Poovorawan Yong
Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok 10330, Thailand.
World J Gastroenterol. 2007 Aug 28;13(32):4345-9. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v13.i32.4345.
To determine whether serum interleukin-18 (IL-18) levels correlated with clinicopathologic features and prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
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.
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 (>= 10(5) pg/mL) had a poorer survival than those with low serum IL-18 levels (< 10(5) 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.
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.
确定血清白细胞介素-18（IL-18）水平与肝细胞癌（HCC）患者的临床病理特征及预后是否相关。
采用酶联免疫吸附测定（ELISA）法检测70例HCC患者和10例健康对照者血清中的IL-18、IL-6和IL-12水平。
HCC患者血清IL-18、IL-6和IL-12水平显著高于对照组。IL-18水平与静脉侵犯的存在以及根据奥田标准分类的肿瘤晚期显著相关。血清IL-18水平高（≥10⁵ pg/mL）的患者生存率低于血清IL-18水平低（<10⁵ pg/mL）的患者（分别为4个月和11个月，P = 0.015）。多因素分析显示，血清IL-18水平而非IL-6和IL-12水平是生存的显著且独立的预后因素。
这些发现表明，血清IL-18可能是肿瘤侵袭性的有用生物学标志物以及HCC患者生存的独立预后因素。因此，应进一步研究IL-18参与肿瘤进展的详细机制。
