Prognostic Signifcance of IL35 Expression in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma

OBJECT: This study was performed to explain the underlying role of IL35 on the prognosis of patients with HCC. METHODS: The expression of IL35 at the protein level was detected with immunohistochemistry (IHC). Chi-square test was performed to analyze the relationship between IL35 expression and clinical parameters of HCC patients. The correlation between expression level of IL35 and the prognosis of patients with HCC was evaluated by Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression method. RESULTS: The positive rate of IL35 expression in HCC samples was about 62.7%, which was significantly higher than that in paired normal specimens (12%). The analyses suggested that there was no correlation between IL35 expression and age, gender, and tumor size (P>0.05), but a tight relationship was found between IL35 expression and metastasis, AFP, HBV infection, Child-Pugh (P<0.05). Susequent Kaplan-Meier analysis result indicated that positive expression of IL35 induced low survival rate of HCC patients, and the Cox regression analysis suggested that IL35 might be a biomarker for prognosis of patients with HCC. CONCLUSION: Generally, results of this study demonstrated that expression of IL35 shared a close association with the prognosis of patients with HCC. Therefore, IL35 could be considered as a novel index for prognosis of patients with HCC.