Department of Thoracic Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Xiangya Road 87th, Changsha, 410008 Hunan, P.R. China.
Xiangya Lung Cancer Center, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha,410008 Hunan, P. R. China.
Biosci Rep. 2024 Apr 24;44(4). doi: 10.1042/BSR20231194.
The role of tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) following surgery remains controversial. Hence, we performed the present study to systematically analyze the prognostic and clinical significance of distinct TAMs biomarkers and distributions in ESCC patients underwent surgery.
PubMed, Web of Science, and EMBASE databases were searched up to March 31, 2023. The pooled analysis was conducted to evaluate the effects of TAMs on overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), and clinicopathological characteristics using fixed-effects or random-effect model.
Involving a total of 2,502 ESCC patients underwent surgery from 15 studies, the results suggested that the total count of CD68+ TAMs was inversely associated with OS and DFS in ESCC patients, which was also noticed in the relationship of CD68+ TAMs in tumor islet (TI) with OS (all P<0.05), although no association between CD68+ TAMs in tumor stroma (TS) and OS (P>0.05). Moreover, either islet or stromal CD163+ TAMs density was a prognostic factor ESCC (all P<0.05). Similarly, an elevated CD204+ TAMs density in TI predicted a poor DFS (P<0.05), although CD204+ TAMs in TI had no relationship with OS (P>0.05). Besides, a high CD68+ TAMs density was significantly associated with lymphatic vessel invasion, vascular invasion, and lymph node metastasis (all P<0.05).
Our results demonstrated the prognostic and clinical significance of TAMs in ESCC patients underwent surgery. TAMs should be considered a target that could improve prognostic stratification and clinical outcomes in ESCC after surgery.
肿瘤相关巨噬细胞（TAMs）在接受手术的食管鳞状细胞癌（ESCC）患者中的作用仍存在争议。因此，我们进行了本研究，旨在系统分析 TAMs 不同生物标志物和分布在接受手术的 ESCC 患者中的预后和临床意义。
检索了 PubMed、Web of Science 和 EMBASE 数据库，截至 2023 年 3 月 31 日。使用固定效应或随机效应模型进行荟萃分析，以评估 TAMs 对总生存率（OS）、无病生存率（DFS）和临床病理特征的影响。
共纳入了 15 项研究的 2502 例接受手术的 ESCC 患者，结果表明 CD68+TAMs 的总数与 ESCC 患者的 OS 和 DFS 呈负相关，这在肿瘤胰岛（TI）中 CD68+TAMs 与 OS 的关系中也得到了体现（均 P<0.05），尽管肿瘤基质（TS）中 CD68+TAMs 与 OS 之间无关联（P>0.05）。此外，胰岛或基质中 CD163+TAMs 密度是 ESCC 的预后因素（均 P<0.05）。同样，TI 中 CD204+TAMs 密度升高预示着 DFS 不良（P<0.05），尽管 TI 中 CD204+TAMs 与 OS 无关（P>0.05）。此外，高 CD68+TAMs 密度与淋巴管侵犯、血管侵犯和淋巴结转移显著相关（均 P<0.05）。
本研究结果表明 TAMs 在接受手术的 ESCC 患者中的预后和临床意义。TAMs 可能被视为改善手术后 ESCC 患者预后分层和临床结局的靶点。
