High levels of proinflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 1β and interleukin 6 in bone marrow and peripheral blood of breast cancer patients as predictors of relapse

Abstract

Breast cancer provides a typical example of an inflammation-linked malignant disease. The inflammatory components present in the tumor microenvironment contribute to the further progression of the disease. The present study was conducted to evaluate the correlation between levels of proinflammation cytokines tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin 1β, interleukin 6, C-reactive protein and tumor recurrence in breast cancer patients. Seventy two breast cancer patients with histologically proven diagnosis and 15 healthy donors were enrolled into study. Thirty one patients with progression of the disease and 41 patients with clinical stabilization (conditional remission) were included to “progression” and “remission” groups respectively. This division of breast cancer patients was made during the 3 years study. The levels of proinflammation cytokines – tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin 1β, interleukin 6 and C-reactive protein were revealed. This cytokines in bone marrow and peripheral blood act as a specific microenvironment and was found that the elevated levels of this cytokines were strongly associated with progression of breast cancer. The data showed that most prominent predictive markers of tumor recurrence are high levels of indicated cytokines in combination with other markers (C-reactive protein; disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow). Determination of the high levels of tumor necrosis factor, interleukin 1β, interleukin 6 in bone marrow and peripheral blood of breast cancer patients are important to establish the features of bone marrow microenvironment for prediction of metastasis and correction antitumor therapy.

Keywords

• breast cancer
• proinflammatory cytokines
• bone marrow
• peripheral blood
• disseminated tumor cells