Abstract

Aim: The aim of our study was to investigate the gene and serum protein expression profiles of IL-8 in colon cancer and associated hepatic metastasis and to correlate these results with clinicopathologic variables of the patients.

Materials and methods: IL-8 was evaluated by qPCR and ELISA in a total number of 62 colon cancer patients (n=42 by qPCR and n=20 by ELISA) in normal and tumoral tissue specimens and serum samples respectively. Additionally synchronous metastasis from 5 of these patients were also collected at the time of surgery and analyzed by qPCR.

Results: IL-8 was up regulated in all analyzed tumoral samples compared with normal tissue (P-value = 0.01) and higher expressed in metastatic tissues compared with tumoral tissues (P -value= 0.03). The median expression of IL-8 in patients over 60 years old was found to be higher compared with the median expression of IL8 in patients less than 60 years old (3.89 compared with 14.69, P -value= 0.005). According to tumor grading, we found that IL-8 in tumors with well differentiated adenocarcinoma have a median mRNA expression of 9.78 compared with a median mRNA IL8 expression of 26.63 in moderate or poor differentiated adenocarcinoma.

Levels of IL-8 determined in serum were statistically significant correlated with preoperative carcinoembryonic antigen level (P -value= 0.003, R=0.57) and with distant metastasis (P-value =0.008). Serum level of IL-8 increased proportionally along with TNM tumor stage and was found to be statistically significant correlated with C-reactive protein (P -value, R=0.64). Colon cancer patients had higher IL-8 levels as determined by ELISA (median value= 29.64 pg/ml) compared with healthy controls (median value= 4.86 pg/ml).

Discussions: Our results provide additional support for the role of inflammation in colon cancer and indicate that IL-8 could be further validated in association with other already used markers for prognostic and diagnostic of evolutional disease in colon cancer patients.

Brief abstract

By investigating the gene and serum protein expression profiles of IL-8 in colon cancer and associated hepatic metastasis, we found correlations between these results and clinicopathological variables of the patients. IL-8 is involved in colon cancer progression and could be monitored in a panel with other biomarkers as an early indicator of the tumor’s evolution.