الفهرس 
AcknowledgmentOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 117 |  |  |
| | | from | 117 | | |
Abstract
Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer diseases among women all over the world. It is a common leading cause of mortality.
Breast cancer is one of the pathological conditions that are associated with increase in the level of serum IL-18 and increase in the level of serum NO in breast cancer patients more than their levels in blood in normal apparently healthy women.
Also the level of serum IL-18 and the level of serum NO increase in metastatic breast cancer patients more than their levels in blood in localized breast cancer patients.
This study was carried out on thirty patients with histologically confirmed breast carcinoma recruited from the out patients clinic of surgery in Menofia university hospital (15 patients with localized breast cancer and 15 patients with metastatic breast caner).
In addition eight age matched apparently healthy women were selected as a control group.
All patients and controls were subjected to full history taking and clinical examination . they were subjected to laboratory investigations as complete blood count, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, liver functions [alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST)] , serum IL-18 and serum NO levels.
In the present study we found that there were highly significant increase in serum IL-18 levels and serum NO levels in both localized breast cancer patients and patients with systemic metastasis compared with the control group (P-value < 0.001).
Also there were significant increase in the level of serum IL-18 in metastatic breast cancer patients when compared with localized breast cancer patients (P- value <0.05).
Also there were significant increases in the level of serum IL-18 among all breast cancer patients when compared with tumor grade (positive correlation) (P-value < 0.05).
In our study we show that there’s a relative increase in number of breast cancer patients with bone metastasis than the number of patients with liver metastasis and other organ metastasis and these cases show significant increase in level of serum IL-18 and serum NO level in patients with bone metastasis
Conclusion
The findings suggest that serum IL-18 and nitrate and nitrite levels may be useful markers in monitoring metastatic breast carcinoma patients. IL-18 and NO activities in breast carcinoma patients with bone metastasis may be more valuable in the follow up of these patients.
Recommendations
We recommend that similar studies to be conducted on a large scale and over a long period to confirm these results.
Further studies are need to be investigated on lymph node status and tumor grade of the breast cancer disease to confirm their relation with the level of serum IL-18 and the level of serum NO in blood.
To confirm our results we can also measure IL-18 and NO in urine by using ligand-affinity chromatography and also we can determine them from tissue by immunohistochemistry.