ReviewMedicina (Kaunas, Lithuania)2026
Circulating Cytokines in Melanoma Prognosis: Current Evidence and Future Perspectives.
Review in Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cutaneous melanoma remains a highly lethal malignancy once metastatic. Current prognostic stratification relies primarily on staging and serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), which incompletely captures inter-patient biological heterogeneity. Increasing evidence highlights the importance of tumour-immune interactions in melanoma progression and response to therapy. This narrative review summarises and critically evaluates current evidence on circulating cytokines as prognostic and biologically informative biomarkers in melanoma, with particular emphasis on the immunotherapy era. Several circulating cytokines-most consistently interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-8 (IL-8)-are associated with adverse outcomes in advanced melanoma. However, baseline elevations predominantly reflect tumour burden and systemic inflammation, indicating prognostic rather than treatment-specific predictive value. In contrast, early on-treatment changes, particularly decreases in IL-8, may better capture evolving tumour-immune interactions during immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. C-reactive protein (CRP), a downstream marker of IL-6 signalling, similarly reflects systemic inflammatory status and carries reproducible prognostic significance. Early circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) dynamics demonstrate strong associations with response and survival and may provide complementary insight into tumour burden kinetics. Conversely, cytokines central to effective antitumour immunity, such as interferon-γ (IFN-γ), are more reliably characterised at the tumour transcriptional level than by circulating protein measurements. Circulating cytokines represent biologically meaningful but methodologically challenging biomarkers in melanoma. Their most realistic clinical role lies in complementing established prognostic factors within integrated biomarker frameworks rather than functioning as standalone tests. Standardisation of pre-analytical handling, assay platforms, and sampling time points, together with prospective validation, is essential before broader clinical implementation.
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Registered trials
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.