Tracking the Levels of Adiponectin and Interleukin-18 for Assessing the Efficiency of Chemotherapy in Suppressing Breast Cancer Progression

Abstract

Breast cancer is a genetically and clinically heterogeneous disease. Cancerous cells multiplying abnormally in the breast, eventually spreading to the rest of the body if untreated. Breast cancer almost exclusively occurs in women. Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide with millions of new cancer patients diagnosed each year and many deaths resulting from this disease. Worldwide, female breast cancer has now surpassed lung cancer as the most commonly diagnosed cancer. SUBJECTS: Ninety two females were included in the current study, they were classified into three groups, depending on their health status (patients and healthy women) and the type of tumor suffered by the study patients: 32 female patients with cancerous breast tumors before receiving chemotherapy, 30 female patients with benign breast tumors (the pathological control group) and 30 females, who were included as a healthy control group. METHODS: Sandwich-ELISA method was applied to evaluate adiponectin and interleukin-18 concentrations in the sera of the study participants. RESULTS: Assessment of the adiponectin revealed a significant increase in the samples of malignant breast tumors group when compared with those of benign breast tumors (p=0.000) and healthy individuals (p=0.002). Interleukin-18 levels in the malignancy tumor group were significantly lower than their levels in the pathological (p=0.007) as well as healthy (p=0.000) controls groups. This study shows apparent slight decrease of adiponectin concentrations in cancerous patients group after getting approximately three consecutive doses of chemotherapy in comparison with its levels pretreatment, while non-significant difference was noted when comparing interleukin-18 levels after receiving the last dose of chemotherapy with its level before starting treatment. Although the levels of interleukin-18 increased after the end of the recommended course of chemotherapy, it did not rise to the levels of this protein in the healthy control group. The individual efficiency (sensitivity) of the evaluated criteria in the current study for distinguishing between cancerous and benign breast tumors was convergent. While the study recorded the highest specificity (93%) for adiponectin while the lowest specificity (40%) was recorded in interleukin-18. Adiponectin and interleukin-18 were able to distinguish 28 out of 32 breast cancer samples (88%).