BACKGROUND CC chemokine ligand 18 (CCL18) is a chemotactic cytokine involved in the pathogenesis and progression of various cancers. Our previous research showed that the expression of CCL18 is obviously higher in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) than in the adjacent normal tissues, suggesting its role in NSCLC. METHODS We further examined the serum level of CCL18 in 80 NSCLC patients with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and simultaneously analyzed the survival curve of these patients by the Kaplan-Meier method, and then utilized a log-rank test to evaluate the correlation of CCL18 expression with the malignant progression of NSCLC. RESULTS Our results showed that the median serum concentration of CCL18 was significantly elevated to 436.11 ng/mL in NSCLC patients compared to 41.97 ng/ml in healthy people (P<0.01), which was also positively related to the expression of lung cancer biomarkers carcinoma-embryonic antigen and cytokeratin fragment antigen 21-1. Moreover, correlation analysis showed that an increased level of serum CCL18 was associated with a worse survival time in NSCLC patients. CONCLUSION Our findings suggest that the serum CCL18 level of NSCLC patients was negatively correlated with the prognosis, thus suggesting that CCL18 may serve as a potential circulating biomarker for NSCLC diagnosis.

中文翻译：

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CC趋化因子配体18的血清水平与非小细胞肺癌的预后相关。

背景CC趋化因子配体18(CCL18)是一种参与多种癌症发病机制和进展的趋化细胞因子。我们之前的研究表明，CCL18 在非小细胞肺癌（NSCLC）中的表达明显高于在邻近正常组织中的表达，提示其在 NSCLC 中的作用。方法采用酶联免疫吸附法进一步检测80例NSCLC患者的血清CCL18水平，同时采用Kaplan-Meier法分析这些患者的生存曲线，然后利用时序检验评估CCL18表达的相关性。随着 NSCLC 的恶性进展。结果 我们的结果显示，NSCLC 患者的 CCL18 中位血清浓度显着升高至 436.11 ng/mL，而健康人为 41.97 ng/mL（P<0.01），这也与肺癌生物标志物癌胚抗原和细胞角蛋白片段抗原21-1的表达呈正相关。此外，相关性分析表明，血清 CCL18 水平升高与 NSCLC 患者更短的生存时间相关。结论 我们的研究结果表明，NSCLC患者血清CCL18水平与预后呈负相关，提示CCL18可作为NSCLC诊断的潜在循环生物标志物。