Westbury, CB, Haviland, J, Davies, S et al. (7 more authors) (2014) Cytokine levels as biomarkers of radiation fibrosis in patients treated with breast radiotherapy. Radiation Oncology, 9. 103. ISSN 1748-717X
Abstract
Background: Radiation fibrosis is not easily measurable although clinical scores have been developed for this purpose. Biomarkers present an alternative more objective approach to quantification, and estimation in blood provides accessible samples. We investigated if blood cytokines could be used to measure established fibrosis in patients who have undergone radiotherapy for breast cancer.Methods: We studied two cohorts treated by breast-conserving surgery and radiotherapy in the UK START Trial A, one with breast fibrosis (cases) and one with no or minimal fibrosis (controls). Two candidate cytokines, plasma connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) and serum interleukin-6 (IL6) were estimated by ELISA. Comparisons between cases and controls used the t-test or Mann-Whitney test and associations between blood concentration and clinical factors were assessed using the Spearman rank correlation coefficient.Results: Seventy patients were included (26 cases, 44 controls). Mean time since radiotherapy was 9.9 years (range 8.3-12.0). No statistically significant differences between cases and controls in serum IL6 (median (IQR) 0.84 pg/ml (0.57-1.14), 0.75 pg/ml (0.41-1.43) respectively) or plasma CTGF (331.4 pg/ml (234.8-602.9), 334.5 pg/ml (270.0-452.8) were identified. There were no significant associations between blood cytokine concentration and age, fibrosis severity, breast size or time since radiotherapy.Conclusions: No significant difference in IL6 or CTGF concentrations was detected between patients with breast fibrosis and controls with minimal or no fibrosis.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 Westbury et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Keywords: | Biomarker; Breast cancer; Connective tissue growth factor; Interleukin-6; Radiation fibrosis |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > Institute of Molecular Medicine (LIMM) (Leeds) > Section of Oncology and Clinical Research (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 20 Mar 2015 15:38 |
Last Modified: | 22 Oct 2019 13:37 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1748-717X-9-103 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/1748-717X-9-103 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:83619 |