Relationship of Interleukin-17 Expression and Ki67 Proliferative Index in Breast Carcinoma

Abstract

Background
Tumor cells have the ability to change the phenotype of inflammatory cells in the tumor environment into protumoral factors. One of
the mediators produced such as interleukin 17 (IL-17) also plays a role in increasing tumor proliferation and invasion. Similar to IL-17,
Ki67 has generally been used as a marker to assess the extent of breast carcinoma proliferation. This is the first study to determine
the relationship of IL-17 expression with Ki67 proliferation index of breast carcinoma patients.
Methods
This is a case series study using 38 paraffin block samples of breast carcinoma patients. The clinicopathological characteristics
documented are age, histopathological subtype and grade, TILs (tumor infiltrating lymphocytes) and molecular subtypes. Interleukin
17 and Ki67 expressions were assessed using immunohistochemistry examination and data were analysed using the Pearson and
Spearman test to assess correlations between the two variables.
Results
General characteristics of the sample in this study were breast cancer patients aged >40 years (73.7%), histopathological subtypes
of non-specific invasive carcinoma (84.2%), high tumor rates (78.9%), non-dominant TILs (94.7%) and molecular subtype luminal B
(55.3%). There is no relationship between IL-17 expression and Ki67 proliferation index (p 0.72 and OR of 1.417), even though lower
expression of IL-17 showed a higher Ki67 proliferation index.
Conclusion
Expression of IL-17 cannot describe the Ki67 proliferation index in breast carcinoma. Studies using another analytical techniques and
large sample size are suggested to obtain more accurate results.