Abstract:
OBJECTIVE To observe the changes of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), pentraxin3 (PTX3) and suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS1) levels and to analyze their correlations with postoperative pulmonary infection in gastric cancer patients, so as to provide new ideas and methods for the clinical prevention and treatment.
METHODS Eighty patients with gastric cancer in Jinhua affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University from Feb. 2022 to Feb. 2024 were included. TLR4, PTX3 and SOCS1 levels were tested and their associations with pulmonary infection were analyzed.
RESULTS Postoperative pulmonary infection was found in 19 out of 80 cases with gastric cancer (23.75%). Thirty-two strains of pathogenic bacteria were isolated after sample submission, including 20 strains of gram-negative bacteria (62.50%), 11 strains of gram-positive (34.38%) and 1 strain of fungi (3.12%). The levels of TLR4 and PTX3 in gastric cancer patients with postoperative pulmonary infection were significantly higher than those in patients without infection (P < 0.05), while SOCS1 showed an opposite difference (P < 0.05). There were significant differences of age, surgical types and diabetes mellitus between infected and non-infected patients by univariate analysis (P < 0.05). Logistic regression analysis revealed that age, diabetes mellitus and increased TLR4 and PTX3 were risk factors for postoperative pulmonary infection (P < 0.05), while increased SOCS1 was a protective factor (P < 0.05). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves showed that the area under curve (AUC) of TLR4, PTX3 and SOCS1 in evaluating pulmonary infection after the surgery of gastric cancer were 0.788, 0.758 and 0.771, respectively; while the AUC, sensitivity and specificity of the three indicators combined were 0.904, 89.54% and 80.29%, respectively.
CONCLUSION The abnormal changes of TLR4, PTX3 and SOCS1 are closely related to postoperative pulmonary infection for gastric cancer patients and have high assessing values.