The clinical significance of coagulation and the inflammatory response in autoimmunity

Lung cancer is a malignant disease with increasing mortality rates. Cytokines play a role in normal cell growth regulation and differentiation and are also implicated in malignant disease. Among these cytokines, Transforming Growth Factor ? type 1 (TGF-?1) acts as a tumor promoter in malignant cells. Several clinical studies have found high levels of TGF-?1 in various cancer types. The aim of this study was to establish a TGF-?1 cut-off point as a complementary diagnostic tool in lung cancer detection. Therefore, 72 clinically well-characterized individuals were studied, 41 lung cancer patients and 31 healthy subjects. Serum TGF-?1 concentration was measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). We compared statistically the serum TGF-?1 concentration between both groups with analysis of variance, linear regression and receiver operating curve analysis. We observed that lung cancer patients produced higher TGF-?1 levels than healthy individuals (37,225 9,436 vs. 28,416 9,324pg/ml, P