Study of Down Regulation IL-37 Expression in Breast Cancer Tumoral Tissues and its Association with Tumoral Grade 3

Background and Aim: Nowadays, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the world. Considering the high prevalence, identification of diagnostic markers can be useful for early diagnosis and cancer management. In recent years many studies have been conducted to determine the role of cytokines in cancers, but role of IL-37 in breast cancer has not been determined, yet. The aim of this study was to investigate IL-37 expression in tumor tissues from breast cancer patients and its relationship with pathologic and clinical symptoms. Material and Methods: In this case-control study we examined 50 formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tumoral tissues from breast cancer patients and 50 non-tumoral adjacent tissues. After informed consent, clinical information of the samples were recorded. Total RNA was extracted and complementary DNA (cDNA) was synthesized. Then, the relative gene expression was determined by using quantitative real-time RT PCR (qRT-PCR) and evaluated by method. Finally, the expression pattern was analyzed by statistical analysis. Results: The results of this study indicated that, the mean relative expression of IL-37 in tumor tissues was significantly lower than that in adjacent healthy tissues and there was statistically a significant difference between them with a 95% confidence level (P = 0.003). The results also indicated a significant decrease in the expression of this cytokine in the tumoral tissues with sizes of >3cm (P = 0.02). The reduction in gene expression was clearly observed in the tumors of grade 2 and 3, which showed a significant relationship between gene expression and grade 3 tumors (P = 0.0001). Conclusion: The results of this study revealed IL-37 can be regarded as a potentially sensitive and valuable biomarker for diagnosis of breast cancer and also tumor size determination. The results of this study can also be used in clinical and diagnostic studies on breast cancer