Iraqi Journal of Medical Sciences






   
Vol. 8 Issue 2 April - June / 2010
Published on website | Date : 2016-05-19 08:51:20

POSSIBLE ROLE OF TH-2 CELL-RELATED CYTOKINES (IL-6 AND IL-10) IN BREAST CANCER

Ahmed A .Al-Hassan, Nidhal Abdul Muhymen, Ala'a Ghany Hussien, Nahla G. Al-Khayli


Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is a complex disease, many etiological agents are proposed to play a role in its pathogenecity, one of these factors is cytokines.
Objectives:In the present study we measured the concentration of IL-6 and IL-10 in serum of breast cancer patients and examined their association with clinicopathological variables including stages of the disease and estrogen/progesterone receptor (ER, PR) expression on tumor cells, to determine whether it associate with the disease progression.
Subjects and Methods: The study included 80 subjects, it comprised of 45 Breast cancer patients, 12 patients with benign breast lesions and 23 apparently healthy controls. ELISA method has been used for estimation the level of IL-6 and IL-10 in serum of three studied groups.
Results: There was an elevation of IL-6 and IL-10 level in the sera of BC patients with significant differences between BC and controls (p<0.001), also, this elevation was associated with progression of the tumor. In addition, IL-6 level was found to be inversely related to ER and PR expression (P< 0.05) while in regard IL-10 there was no significant differences in the median of IL-10 level between the patients who express positive and negative ER and PR.
Conclusions: These data indicated that elevated IL-6 and IL-10 serum levels are associated with BC and associate with advanced stage of disease. It was feasible that assays for serum levels of IL-6 and IL-10 can be used as predictive tests for tumor progression in BC patients.
Keywords: Breast cancer, IL-6, IL-10.


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