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Interferon-gamma polymorphisms correlate with duration of survival in pancreatic cancer.

Halma MA, Wheelhouse NM, Barber MD, Powell JJ, Fearon KC, Ross JA

Tissue Injury and Repair Group, Centre for Inflammation Research, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

Despite progress in diagnosis and staging, pancreatic cancer still has a poor prognosis and it remains difficult to predict duration of survival in advanced pancreatic cancer. Nutritional decline, or cachexia, is a contributory factor to decreased survival in advanced pancreatic carcinoma, and it has been demonstrated that proinflammatory cytokines give rise to cachexia. Interferon (IFN)-gamma is a proinflammatory cytokine whose administration increases survival outcomes in a variety of cancers. The human IFN-gamma gene has a variable length CA-repeat sequence, the length that has been shown to influence IFN-gamma production. The current study was performed to ascertain whether polymorphisms of the IFN-gamma gene would influence survival of individuals with advanced pancreatic cancer. The study demonstrated that the presence of allele 2 (12 CA repeats) was consistently associated with increased duration of survival after confirmation of nonresectable pancreatic carcinoma. We therefore propose that the presence of allele 2 may be a useful marker for patient outcome.

Published 23 November 2004 in Hum Immunol, 65(11): 1405-8.
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