The Expression And Significance Of IL-8 In The Tissue Of Breast Carcinoma

Objective: Breast cancer is the most common malignant neoplasm in women. Now the disease incidence is increased. The treatments of breast carcinoma include operation, chemotherapy, radiation therapy and hormono-therapy, and so on. Operation is the most important in them. Many patients can prolong their lives by these ways. But some patients cannot escape from death after all treatments in soon. All these show that we can't think all patients treatments are similar. We should conduct different treatments against breast cancer patients. How to predict the patients'prognosis accurately and instructing these patients'treatments early are the problems that all doctors want to solve. IL-8, a member of the C-X-C chemokine family, originally classified as a neutrophil chemoattactant with inflammatory activity, is a potent angiogenic factor in several cancers and is associated with angiogenesis, tumor growth, metastasis and recurrence. Now there are few researches about IL-8 in breast cancer tissue in our country. We want to adopt retrospective analysis to investigate the expression of IL-8 in breast carcinoma tissues, normal breast and benign tumor tissues by immunohistochemistry and confirm if IL-8 is high expressed in breast cancer tissues. Our aim is to investigate the relationships between IL-8 and clinical, pathological characteristics and biological factors, such as ER, PR, VEGF, MVD. All these will provide a theoretical basis for predicting prognosis and clinical treatment. Methods: 103 cases of breast carcinoma, 8 cases of normal breast tissues and 21 cases of benign tumor were obtained by randomization from the patients who admitted operation treatment in the Forth Hospital of He Bei Medical University from September 1997 to September 1999. All these patients had been followed-up. They were all women from 27 to 84 years old. IL-8, ER, PR, VEGF, the microvessel density (MVD, the immunological reagents were employed monoclonal antibody against of CD105 to investigate MVD) in all breast carcinoma tissues and IL-8 in all normal and benign tumor tissues were detected with corresponding reagents by S-P immunohistochemistry methods. All data were collected and analyzed by using the SPSS11.5 for windows software, including χ2 test and Spearman regression analysis to predict the prognosis significance of IL-8. Results: 1. The different expressions of IL-8 in breast carcinoma and normal, benign tumor tissues: 79.6% of the positive expression of IL-8 in 103 patients with breast cancer was found, 21 patients was (-), and 35 (+), 36 (++), 11 (+++). In the normal and benign tumor tissues, only 13.8% of the positive expression of IL-8 was found. The expression of IL-8 inthe normal and benign tumor tissues is lower than that of the breast cancer (P=0.000). 2. The relationship between the expression of IL-8 and positive axillary lymph node, diameter of tumor and clinical stage: The (++) ～(+++) expression of IL-8 in the group which the lymph node of metastasis was over 4 was remarkably higher than that of in the group which the lymph node of metastasis was 1～3 or negative (P=0.011). There wasn't distinct statistic significance between the expression of IL-8 and the diameter of tumor (P=0.971). The expression of IL-8 in the patients with stage Ⅲwas higher than that of in the patients with stageⅠand Ⅱ(P=0.02). 3. The relationship between the expression of IL-8 and pathology type, different histological grade: There wasn't distinct statistic significance of the expression of IL-8 between infiltrative ductal carcinoma of breast, infiltrative lobular carcinoma and medullary carcinoma (P=0.265). The rate of the expression of IL-8 in histological grade Ⅲwas 95.2%, which was remarkably higher than in histological grade Ⅱ(68.9%) (P=0.001). 4. The relationship between the expression of IL-8 and MVD: The count of MVD investigating by monoclonal antibody against of CD105 was 0～17.67, the median is 5.33 . The count of MVD in the positive and negative IL-8 expression groups had statistical significance (P=0.000). The expression of IL-8 was positive correlation with the count of MVD (rs=0.372, P=0.000). 5. The relationship between the expression of IL-8 and VEGF: The expression of IL-8 in the group of VEGF (-)was 64.7%, the group of VEGF (+) was 80%, the group of VEGF (++)was 93.1%, the group of VEGF (+++) was 100%. There was distinct statistic significance between IL-8 and VEGF (P=0.001), and IL-8 was positive correlation with the expression of VEGF (rs=0.350, P=0.000). 6. There wasn't distinct statistic significance of the expression of IL-8 between the negative and positive of ER, PR cases. 7. The relationship between the expression of IL-8 and prognosis of breast cancer: There were 35 patients who died of the disease or were found metastasis and recurrence. The positive expression of IL-8 in these patients'tissues was 91.4%. The (++)～(+++) expression of IL-8 in the group was 62.9%. However in the group of survival without tumor over 5 years, the positive expression of IL-8 was 73.5%. There was distinct statistic significance between them (P=0.023). Conclusions: 1. The expression of IL-8 in breast cancer tissues was higher than that of in the normal and benign tumor tissues. 2. The expression of IL-8 in positive metastasis lymph node group, stage Ⅲand low differentiation histological grade group (gradeⅢ) was remarkably higher than that of other groups. 3. The expression of IL-8 was positive correlation with the expression of VEGF. They might play important role together in metastasis and growth of breast carcinoma. There was positive correlation with the count of MVD. IL-8 play important role in angiogenesis of breast carcinoma. The growth and metastasis of tumor are dependent on angiogenesis. 4. There...