Evaluation of IL-2 and IL-7 expression in patients with prostate cancer

Abstract

Background: Prostate cancer is a biologically heterogeneous disease which has become the fifth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men worldwide. Interleukins (ILs) display required inflammation moderator. IL-2 and IL-7 play significant roles in regulating cancer-immune system interactions. So, the purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the expression level of IL-2 and IL-7 in prostate cancer patients and healthy subjects. Materials and methods: In this case-control study, expression of IL-2 and IL-7 was examined in peripheral blood of 40 prostate cancer patients and 40 healthy subjects by reverse transcription quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Results: Our findings showed that IL-7 has highly elevated expression in patients with prostate cancer compared to healthy subjects (p-value = 0.0001). In contrast, no significant difference was observed in the expression of the IL-2 between the two study groups (p-value = 0.12). Conclusions: Based on the results, IL-7 may be used as a prospective biomarker or as a molecular target in designing new prostate cancer control strategies. However, the findings of this investigation revealed no association between IL-2 expression and prostate cancer. Nevertheless, more studies should be included to appraise the exact relevance of this gene to prostate cancer.

Keywords

• interleukin
• il-2
• il-7
• prostate cancer.