Cytokine as an potential prognostic factor associated with absolute value of neutrophil and serum albumin in breast cancer patients.

Abstract

e13007 Background: Cytokines are involved in many inflammatory diseases through various ways and play an important role in tumor immune regulation. With the development of molecular biology these years, researchers have found that breast cancer is not only related to genetic and environmental factors, but also to the chronic inflammation and immunity. But at the moment，there are few studies on the prognostic evaluation of serum cytokines in breast cancer. The correlation between serum cytokines and leukocytes was not clear. The purpose of this study is to investigate the value of serum cytokines in prognosis of breast tumors and their relationship with leukocyte characters and serum albumin level. Methods: A total of 75 serum samples and clinicopathological data of breast cancer patients from Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital were collected. The expression levels of 12 cytokines (IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-5, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12p70, IL-17, TNF-α, IFN-α, IFN-γ) in serum were detected by immunofluorescence method. The absolute value of different kinds of leukocyte were determined by automatic blood analyzer. The concentration of albumin (ALB) was determined by bromocresol green method (BCG method). Univariate Cox regression and multivariate Cox regression were used to analyze the influence of the above indexes and clinicopathological features on the prognosis of patients. The correlation between the expression of cytokines and the absolute value of various kinds of leukocyte and serum albumin was studied by using multiple regression analysis. Results: A multivariate Cox proportional risk model was established by including breast cancer stage, molecular typing, IL-10, IL-12p70, absolute value of neutrophil, serum albumin and dipeptide aminopeptidase. It showed that different breast cancer stage (HR=0.415, 95%CI 0.191-0.902, P=0.026), and IL-10 (HR=0.177, 95%CI 0.038-0.821, P=0.027) were independent prognostic factors, Luminal B breast cancer had a statistically significant impact on survival compared with triple negative breast cancer (HR=0.193, 95%CI 0.067-0.554, P=0.002). The effect of other variables on survival was not statistically significant (P>0.05). Multiple linear regression analysis model demonstrated that the absolute value of neutrophils (b=1.498, t =2.938, P=0.005) and serum albumin (b=1.253, t=2.777, P=0.007) had statistically significant differences on IL-10, but breast cancer stage (b=0.635, t=1.776, P=0.08) and dipeptide aminopeptidase had no significant difference (b=0.952, t=1.715, P=0.091). Conclusions: Serum IL-10 plays an important role in indicating the prognosis of patients with breast cancer and its expression level was closely correlated with absolute value of neutrophil and serum albumin.