Increasing serum level of transforming growth factor beta 2 (TGF-β) in patients with colorectal and gastric cancer in Iraq

Abstract

Gastrointestinal cancers (GITs) are worldwide problem particularly in highly developed countries. In Iraq, gastric cancer(GC) is the 9th most common cancer while colorectal cancers (CRC) is considered as the 7th most common cancer among all cancer patients in both males and females. The Objective of this study was to estimate the serum level of transforming growth factor beta 2 (TGF-β) in Iraqi patients who are complying from gastric and colorectal cancers. Fifty four serum samples were collected starting from the 1st of March till the mid of May of 2011 to investigate the TGF-β serum level by using ELISA technique. Thirty eight samples were gastric (H.pylori +ve) and colorectal cancer patients (GC=17, CRC=21) while the other 16 samples considered as a healthy control group. The results showed that TGF-β serum levels of both GIT tumors were increased significantly (p<0.05) compared to the healthy control group. In conclusion, the presented study showed elevated serum level of TGF-β in Gastric cancer patients which could point out to use this elevation as a biomarker for tumor prognosis; while in colorectal cancer it may evade the immune system cancer killing mechanisms. We recommend further studies concerning the correlation between serum level of TGF-β in Gastric cancer patients with staging and grading, and more immunological techniques can be implied to know the exact immunological evading mechanism of colorectal cancer cells.