In Patients with Colorectal Cancer, Preoperative Serum Interleukin-6 Level and Granulocyte/Lymphocyte Ratio Are Clinically Relevant Biomarkers of Long-Term Cancer Progression

Objective: To investigate the clinical significance of the serum inflammatory cytokines and the blood granulocytes/lymphocytes (G/L) ratio in patients with colorectal cancer. Methods: Forty-six patients underwent surgery for colorectal cancer. The G/L ratio and serum inflammatory cytokines including interleukin (IL)-1 beta, IL-6, IL-8, tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF) were measured before surgery and correlated with the Tumour Node Metastasis classification and overall survival. Results: Serum IL-6 in T3-4, N1-2, M1 cases and cancer stages III-IV subgroups was significantly higher than in Tis-2, N0, M0 and cancer stages 0-II sub-groups. The G/L ratio, serum M-CSF and TNF-alpha in T3-4 cases were significantly higher than in Tis-2 cases. Furthermore,the G/L ratio and serum IL-6 showed a significant inverse correlation with the overall survival, while the G/L ratio showed a significant positive correlation with serum IL-6, TNF-alpha and M-CSF. Multivariate analysis showed that the serum IL-6 level and G/L ratio were independent risk factors for poor prognosis. Conclusions: In this investigation, a pre-operative high level of serum IL-6 and the G/L ratio appeared to be significant predictive factors for cancer progression and poor prognosis. Accordingly, these variables might be clinically relevant biomarkers in patients with colorectal cancer. Copyright (c) 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel