Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Mar 14, 2017; 23(10): 1780-1786
Published online Mar 14, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i10.1780
Clinicopathological significance of overexpression of interleukin-6 in colorectal cancer
Jun Zeng, Zhong-Hua Tang, Shuang Liu, Shan-Shan Guo
Jun Zeng, Zhong-Hua Tang, Shuang Liu, Shan-Shan Guo, College of Life Sciences, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing 401331, China
Author contributions: Zeng J contributed to the design of the experiments, data acquisition and analysis, scientific discussion, and manuscript revision; Tang ZH, Liu S and Guo SS substantially contributed to the experimental preparation and the preparation of the manuscript; all authors approved the final version of the article to be published.
Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81502131; the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing, No. cstc2016jcyjA0405; and the Scientific and Technological Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission, No. KJ1500332.
Institutional review board statement: All colorectal cancer specimens from the patients were acquired after informed consent and ethical permission was obtained for participation in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: To the best of our knowledge, no conflict of interest exists.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Jun Zeng, PhD, College of Life Sciences, Chongqing Normal University, 37 Daxuecheng Middle Road, Chongqing 401331, China. zengjun_2012@163.com
Telephone: + 86-187-23179063
Received: September 17, 2016
Peer-review started: September 19, 2016
First decision: October 20, 2016
Revised: November 6, 2016
Accepted: December 2, 2016
Article in press: December 2, 2016
Published online: March 14, 2017
Processing time: 176 Days and 21.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Previous studies have demonstrated that interleukin (IL)-6 is a critical tumor promoter during early CRC tumorigenesis. However, there have been few studies regarding the expression of IL-6 and its prognostic role in CRC. Therefore, we explored the correlation between the expression of IL-6 and the clinicopathological features in CRC. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first analysis of the expression of IL-6 in resected CRC samples using immunohistochemistry combined with biostatistics. The results showed that the expression of IL-6 was correlated with tumour TNM stage and histological differentiation. Furthermore, IL-6 in tumour cells showed stronger immunoreactivity as tumour cells invaded deeply. These data indicated that IL-6 might be used as a potential therapeutic target in patients with CRC.