Circulating interleukin-18 (IL-18) is a predictor of response to gemcitabine based chemotherapy in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma

• Published in: Journal of infection and chemotherapy : official journal of the Japan Society of Chemotherapy Vol. 23; no. 4; pp. 196 - 200
• Main Authors: Usul Afsar, Çiğdem, Karabulut, Mehmet, Karabulut, Senem, Alis, Halil, Gonenc, Murat, Dagoglu, Nergiz, Serilmez, Murat, Tas, Faruk
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Ltd 01.04.2017
• Subjects: Adenocarcinoma - blood; Adenocarcinoma - drug therapy; Adenocarcinoma - pathology; Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Antimetabolites, Antineoplastic - therapeutic use; Deoxycytidine - analogs & derivatives; Deoxycytidine - therapeutic use; Diagnostic; Disease Progression; Female; Gemcitabine; Hematology, Oncology and Palliative Medicine; Humans; IL-18; Interleukin-18 - blood; L-Lactate Dehydrogenase - metabolism; Male; Middle Aged; Pancreatic adenocarcinoma; Pancreatic Neoplasms; Pancreatic Neoplasms - blood; Pancreatic Neoplasms - drug therapy; Pancreatic Neoplasms - pathology; Predictive; Prognosis; Serum; Pancreatic adenocarcinoma; Diagnostic; Serum; IL-18; Predictive
• ISSN: 1341-321X; 1437-7780; 1437-7780
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jiac.2016.12.003

This study was conducted to investigate the serum levels of interleukin-18 (IL-18) in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PA) and the relationship with tumor progression and known prognostic parameters. Thirty-three patients with PA were studied. Serum samples were obtained on first admission before any treatment. Serum IL-18 levels were analyzed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Age- and sex-matched 30 healthy controls were included in the analysis. The median age at diagnosis was 59 years, range 32–84 years; 20 (61%) patients were men and the remaining were women. The median follow-up time was 26.0 weeks (range: 1.0–184.0 weeks). The median overall survival of the whole group was 41.3 ± 8.3 weeks [95% confidence interval (CI) = 25–58 weeks]. The baseline serum IL-18 levels were significantly higher in patients with PA than in the control group (p < 0.001). Serum IL-18 levels were significantly higher in the patients with high erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) (p = 0.01 and p = 0.05). Moreover, the chemotherapy-(CTx) unresponsive patients had higher serum IL-18 levels compared to CTx-responsive (p = 0.04) subjects. Conversely, serum IL-18 concentration was found to have no prognostic role on survival (p = 0.45). Serum levels of IL-18 can be a good diagnostic and predictive marker; especially for predicting the response to gemcitabine based CTx in patients with PA but it has no prognostic role.