Predictive capacity of IL-8 expression in head and neck squamous carcinoma patients treated with radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy

To analyse the relationship between the transcriptional expression of interleukin-8 (IL-8) and response to treatment with radiotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN).

Retrospective study from tumour biopsies obtained before a treatment with radiotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy in 87 patients with SCCHN. We had a sample of healthy mucosa in 35 cases. We determined the transcriptional expression of IL-8 with RT-PCR. The transcriptional expression of IL-8 was categorized according to the local control of the disease with a recursive partitioning analysis.

The transcriptional expression of IL-8 in tumour tissue was about 50 times higher than that in the samples of healthy mucosa. Patients with a high transcriptional expression of IL-8 (n=56) had a 5-year local recurrence-free survival of 65.6%, and for patients with low expression (n=31) it was 90.2% (P=.017). According to the results of a multivariate analysis, patients with high expression of IL-8 had a 4.1 higher risk of local recurrence of the tumour.

SCCHN have a significant increase in transcriptional expression of IL-8 in relation to non-tumour tissue. Tumours with high IL-8 expression have an increased risk of local recurrence after treatment with radiotherapy or chemo-radiotherapy.