Background
The serum soluble CD163 (sCD163) is elevated in patients with infection disease and several types of cancer. However, the prognostic value of serum sCD163 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) has not yet been investigated.
Methods
Serum level of sCD163 was measured by using the peripheral blood of 54 patients with PDAC, 20 patients with benign tumor of pancreas, and 30 healthy volunteers (healthy controls). The association between serum sCD163 level and overall survival was analyzed. Receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) curves were generated, and areas under the curve (AUC) were compared to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy, including CA 19-9, CEA, CA 125, CA 153, serum sCD163 level and combination of sCD163 and CA19-9.
Results
Serum sCD163 level of patients with PDAC was significant higher than patients with benign tumor (p = 0.002) and health controls (p < 0.001). Using ROCs curves, we found that the AUC values of serum sCD163 were higher than those of CA 125 and CA 153, but lower than those of CA 19-9 and CEA. The combination of sCD163 and CA19-9 had higher diagnostic accuracy than CA19-9 or sCD163 alone. In addition, the prognosis of PDAC patients with sCD163 ≥ median was worse than sCD163 < median by using univariate analysis (p = 0.027). Further, multivariate analysis showed that higher level of serum sCD163 was still associated with poorer overall survival (p = 0.030). Serum sCD163 was not associated with tumoral CD163 expression, whereas negatively correlated with lymphocyte to monocyte ratio (r = -0.428, p = 0.001).
Conclusion
The serum sCD163 has the potential as a new promising parameter to predict the prognosis in PDAC patients.