The association of serum IL-33/ST2 expression with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract Background: IL-33 is considered to be a multifunctional cytokine with dual functions. However, the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of IL-33 in cancer patients, especially hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)，remains controversial. Therefore, we conducted 565 patients with HCC and 561 healthy controls and a meta-analysis to quantitatively evaluate the above problems. Methods: We collected the blood of 565 patients with HCC and 561 healthy controls. ELISA was used to detect the concentration of IL-33 and ST2 in the serum, and the RT-PCR method was used to detect the levels of IL-33 and ST2 mRNA content. Meanwhile, we collected comprehensive literature on IL-33 and clinical characteristics of cancer patients retrieved from PubMed, Web of Science and CNKI databases as of August 15, 2021. An odds ratio (OR) with a 95% confidence interval (CI) were used to estimate the impact through overall and stratified analysis. Results: Compared with the healthy control group, the levels of ST2 mRNA and serum in the peripheral blood of HCC patients increased(P<0.05), while the levels of IL-33 mRNA and serum showed no significant difference between the two groups (P>0.05). In the meta-analysis section, at the level of tissue level, the overall analysis showed that the expression of IL-33 was positively correlated with tumor stage, histological grade, distant metastasis and tumor size. Compared with the low IL-33 expression, the 3-year overall survival (OS) rate (OR=3.467, P <0.001) and 5-year OS rate (OR=2.784, P <0.001) of patients with high IL-33 expression were lower. At the level of serum level expression, the overall analysis showed that the expression of IL-33 would increase the risk of cancer, and the serum level of IL-33 was positively correlated patient’s with tumor stage and vascular invasion. Conclusion: IL-33/ST2 is a useful predictive or prognostic biomarker in clinical evaluation, and may be used as a potential therapeutic target, but it needs a lot of research to verify.