Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship of pretreatment serum IL-10 (sIL-10) levels with known prognostic factors and with failure-free survival (FFS) in patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL).
Patients and methods: Interleukin-10 (IL-10) levels were measured in the sera of 36 untreated patients with HL and were subsequently correlated with clinical and laboratory prognostic parameters as well as with FFS.
Results: 36 untreated HL patients (21 men, median age 31 (18-62) years) were studied. Of the subjects, 19 (52.7%) had elevated IL-10 levels (> or = 10 pg/ml). High IL-10 correlated with bulky disease, high serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and leukocytosis (P = 0.015 for all three variables). High IL-10 (P = 0.015) and low serum albumin (P = 0.001) were associated with worse FFS, but only high IL-10 emerged as an independent predictor of inferior FFS in multivariate analysis (P = 0.04, hazard ratio 2.21, 95% CI 1.12-14.67). Median FFS of IL-10-positive patients (30 (12-47) months) was significantly shorter compared to that of IL-10-negative ones (39 (12-58) months, log-rank test P = 0.0185).
Conclusions: IL-10 was found to be elevated in approximately half of untreated patients with HL, to correlate with bulky disease, high LDH and leukocytosis and to be an independent predictor of FFS.