Department of Clinical Laboratory, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, China.
BMC Cancer. 2023 Jul 28;23(1):704. doi: 10.1186/s12885-023-11179-5.
IL-33 is a multifunctional cytokine with dual functions. However, the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of IL-33 in cancer patients, especially in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), remains controversial. Therefore, we conducted a study of 565 patients with HCC and 561 healthy controls and performed a meta-analysis to quantitatively evaluate the above problems.
We collected blood from 565 patients with HCC and 561 healthy controls. ELISA was used to detect the concentrations of IL-33 and ST2 in the serum, and RT‒PCR was used to detect the levels of IL-33 and ST2 mRNA. Meanwhile, we collected comprehensive literature on IL-33 and the clinical characteristics of cancer patients retrieved from the PubMed, Web of Science and CNKI databases as of December 2022. An odds ratio (OR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) was used to estimate the impact through overall and stratified analyses.
Compared with the healthy control group, the levels of ST2 mRNA and serum in the peripheral blood of HCC patients increased (p < 0.05), while the levels of IL-33 mRNA and serum showed no significant difference between the two groups (p > 0.05). In the meta-analysis section, at the tissue level, the overall analysis showed that the expression of IL-33 was positively correlated with tumor stage, histological grade, distant metastasis, and tumor size. Compared with patients with low IL-33 expression, the 3-year overall survival (OS) rate (OR = 3.467, p < 0.001) and 5-year OS rate (OR = 2.784, p < 0.001) of patients with high IL-33 expression were lower. At the serum expression level, the overall analysis showed that the expression of IL-33 increased the risk of cancer, and the serum level of IL-33 was positively correlated with tumor stage and vascular invasion.
IL-33/ST2 is a useful predictive or prognostic biomarker in clinical evaluation and may be used as a potential therapeutic target, but much research is needed to verify this hypothesis.
IL-33 是一种具有双重功能的多功能细胞因子。然而，IL-33 在癌症患者中的临床病理和预后意义，特别是在肝细胞癌（HCC）患者中，仍然存在争议。因此，我们对 565 例 HCC 患者和 561 例健康对照者进行了研究，并进行了荟萃分析，以定量评估上述问题。
我们收集了 565 例 HCC 患者和 561 例健康对照者的血液。采用酶联免疫吸附试验（ELISA）检测血清中 IL-33 和 ST2 的浓度，采用 RT-PCR 检测 IL-33 和 ST2 mRNA 的水平。同时，我们从PubMed、Web of Science 和 CNKI 数据库中收集了截至 2022 年 12 月有关 IL-33 和癌症患者临床特征的综合文献。通过总分析和分层分析，使用优势比（OR）及其 95%置信区间（CI）来估计影响。
与健康对照组相比，HCC 患者外周血中 ST2 mRNA 和血清水平升高（p<0.05），而两组间 IL-33 mRNA 和血清水平无显著差异（p>0.05）。在荟萃分析部分，在组织水平上，总体分析表明，IL-33 的表达与肿瘤分期、组织学分级、远处转移和肿瘤大小呈正相关。与 IL-33 低表达的患者相比，IL-33 高表达的患者 3 年总生存率（OS）率（OR=3.467，p<0.001）和 5 年 OS 率（OR=2.784，p<0.001）较低。在血清表达水平上，总体分析表明，IL-33 的表达增加了癌症的风险，且 IL-33 的血清水平与肿瘤分期和血管侵犯呈正相关。
IL-33/ST2 是临床评估中一种有用的预测或预后生物标志物，可能作为一种潜在的治疗靶点，但需要进一步研究来验证这一假设。
