ArticlePancreatology : official journal of the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) ... [et al.]2019
Circulating interleukin-6 is associated with disease progression, but not cachexia in pancreatic cancer.
Article in Pancreatology : official journal of the International Association of Pancreatology (IAP) ... [et al.], 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
- The mortality burden of cachexia or weight loss in patients with colorectal or pancreatic cancer: A systematic literature review.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2024Pooled it
- Prognostic significance of pre-intervention circulating cytokines in digestive system cancers: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2026Review
- The effects of tissue inflammation on cancer cachexia.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Molecular basis of disease · 2026Review
- Exercise-modulated IL-6 in cancer cachexia: molecular mechanisms and therapeutic potential.Journal of translational medicine · 2026Review
- IL-6 as a central driver of immune evasion in PDAC: from IDO-mediated tolerance to multi-pathway immunosuppression.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Early adipose tissue wasting in a preclinical model of human lung cancer cachexia.Cell reports · 2025Article
- Cancer-Associated Cachexia: Bridging Clinical Findings with Mechanistic Insights in Human Studies.Cancer discovery · 2025Review
- The metabolic basis of cancer-related fatigue.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Cancer cachexia: multilevel metabolic dysfunction.Nature metabolism · 2024Review
- Muscle inflammation is regulated by NF-κB from multiple cells to control distinct states of wasting in cancer cachexia.Cell reports · 2024Article
- Assessment of the circulating levels of immune system checkpoint selected biomarkers in patients with lung cancer.Molecular biology reports · 2024Article
- Pancreatic stellate cells and the interleukin family: Linking fibrosis and immunity to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (Review).Molecular medicine reports · 2024Review
- IL-6 promotes tumor growth through immune evasion but is dispensable for cachexia.EMBO reports · 2024Article
- Hepatic signal transducer and activator of transcription-3 signalling drives early-stage pancreatic cancer cachexia via suppressed ketogenesis.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2024Article
- Macrophage-fibroblast JAK/STAT dependent crosstalk promotes liver metastatic outgrowth in pancreatic cancer.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The Role of Pretreatment Serum Interleukin 6 in Predicting Short-Term Mortality in Patients with Advanced Pancreatic Cancer.Biomedicines · 2024Article
- Optimization of a mouse model of pancreatic cancer to simulate the human phenotypes of metastasis and cachexia.BMC cancer · 2024Article
- Associations of diabetes, circulating protein biomarkers, and risk of pancreatic cancer.British journal of cancer · 2024Article
- Skeletal muscle adaptations in patients with lung cancer: Longitudinal observations from the whole body to cellular level.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2023Article
- Systemic Reprogramming of Endothelial Cell Signaling in Metastasis and Cachexia.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
21 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCachexia is a wasting syndrome characterized by involuntary loss of >5% body weight due to depletion of adipose and skeletal muscle mass. In cancer, the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6) is considered a mediator of cachexia and a potential biomarker, but the relationship between IL-6, weight loss, and cancer stage is unknown. In this study we sought to evaluate IL-6 as a biomarker of cancer cachexia while accounting for disease progression.
methodsWe retrospectively studied 136 subjects with biopsy-proven pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), considering the high prevalence of cachexia is this population. Clinical data were abstracted from subjects in all cancer stages, and plasma IL-6 levels were measured using a multiplex array and a more sensitive ELISA. Data were evaluated with univariate comparisons, including Kaplan-Meier survival curves, and multivariate Cox survival models.
resultsOn multiplex, a total of 43 (31.4%) subjects had detectable levels of plasma IL-6, while by ELISA all subjects had detectable IL-6 levels. We found that increased plasma IL-6 levels, defined as detectable for multiplex and greater than median for ELISA, were not associated with weight loss at diagnosis, but rather with the presence of metastasis (p < 0.001 for multiplex and p = 0.007 for ELISA). Further, while >5% weight loss was not associated with worse survival, increased plasma IL-6 by either methodology was.
conclusionCirculating IL-6 levels do not correlate with cachexia (when defined by weight loss), but rather with advanced cancer stage. This suggests that IL-6 may mediate wasting, but should not be considered a diagnostic biomarker for PDAC-induced cachexia.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.