Relationship between serum ferritin and bone metastasis of prostate cancer

Abstract

Objective To observe the changes of serum ferritin (SF), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and soluble transferrin receptor (sTfR) in prostate cancer patients with bone metastasis, analyze the correlation among three indexes, and to explore the role of SF in prostate cancer with bone metastasis. Methods From 2011 January to 2014 June, 25 cases of prostate cancer with bone metastasis, 30 cases of prostate cancer without bone metastasis, and 30 patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) were included. The age of patients ranged from 55 to 75 years (mean 67). In the group of prostate cancer with bone metastasis, the baseline prostate specific antigen (PSA) was more than 20 μg/L, ranging from 20.0-1 500 μg/L (mean 138.0 μg/L), serum PSA ranged from 3.5-28.2 μg/L (mean 10.2 μg/L) in the group of prostate cancer without bone metastasis, and serum PSA ranged from 0.3-14.2 μg/L (mean 3.7 μg/L) in the group of BPH. In the morning fasting venous blood was taken out, and serum was isolated. The competitive in-phase enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA) was used to determine serum SF, IL-6 and sTfR. Results The expression of SF was (330.0±61.9) μg/L in prostate cancer with bone metastasis group, (140.1±17.1) μg/L in prostate cancer without bone metastasis group, and (128.3±12.7) μg/L in BPH grou. There was significant difference between prostate cancer with bone metastasis group and protate cancer without bone metastasis group or BPH group (P<0.05). In prostate cancer with bone metastasis group, SF was significantly correlated with IL-6 [(22.5±22.1) μg/L] and sTfR [(5.7±2.6) μg/L] expression with the correlation coefficients being 0.972, -0.987, 0.971 respectively (P<0.05) Conclusion Serum SF expression, which increased in prostate cancer with bone metastasis, can be used as a sensitive index for diagnosis and prognosis evaluation of advanced prostate cancer with bone metastasis. Key words: Serum ferritin; Prostate cancer; Bone metastasis