Serum interleukin-10 levels in patients with advanced gastrointestinal malignancies

BACKGROUND, Interleukin-10 (IL-10) is a cytokine with immunosuppressive pro perties. In this study, the authors investigated the prognostic significanc e of IL-10 levels in, the sera of 58 patients with advanced gastric or colo rectal carcinoma. METHODS. IL-10 serum levels were measured before chemotherapy, on completio n of chemotherapy, and at follow-up by means of a commercially available en zyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay kit. The results then were analyzed in co mparison with other prognostic variables and a model predicting overall sur vival (OS) and time to disease progression (TTP) was generated. RESULTS. Elevated levels of serum IL-10 were found in carcinoma patients co mpared with healthy controls (19.6 +/- 6.8 pg/mL vs. 9.2 +/- 1.5 pg/mL; P < 0.0001), with those patients with metastatic disease shelving significantl y higher levels than patients with undisseminated disease (21.9 +/- 6.7 pg/ mL vs. 15.5 +/- 3.6 pg/mL; P = 0.0003). Retrospective analysis of prechemot herapy IL-10 serum levels showed a significant difference between responder s and nonresponders (15.8 +/- 2.5 pg/mL vs. 21.6 +/- 7.6 pg/mL; P < 0.0001) . Moreover, a further significant increase in IL-10 serum levels was observ ed in nonresponders at the end of therapy (21.6 +/- 7.6 pg/mL prechemothera py vs. 31.3 +/- 11.6 pg/mL postchemotherapy; P < 0.0001) whereas no signifi cant differences were observed in responders. Using univariate analysis, bo th OS and TTP were shown to be affected by the median pathologic levels of IL-10; multivariate analysis related to OS and TTP identified performance s tatus and IL-10 serum level as the relevant prognostic factors, respectivel y. Finally, stepwise regression analysis identified IL-10 serum level and m etastases as the prognostic factors related to both OS and TTP. CONCLUSIONS. The results of the current study show that measurement of pret reatment serum levels of IL-10 is of independent prognostic utility in pati ents with advanced gastrointestinal carcinoma and may be useful for the det ection of disease progression. Cancer 1999;86:1936-43. (C) 1999 American Ca ncer Society.