Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Canine lymphoma (cL) is one of the most prevalent neoplastic diseases in dogs. There is a need for more efficient and specific biomarkers to enhance the efficacy of monitoring treatment response and predicting prognosis in affected patients. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the cytokine IL12p40 could be used to measure response and prognosis in patients with cL. Levels of IL12p40 from naive dogs and their subsequent samples were analysed by ELISA in
the sera of 28 dogs with cL and 24 healthy dogs. T-tests were run to interpret statistical significance of results, response was determined by plotting all subsequent cL samples in graphs and prognosis was examined using Kaplan-Meier survival analyses. There was a significant elevation of IL12p40 in dogs with cL compared to healthy dogs. IL12p40 followed clinical response through increasing with clinical manifestation and decreasing with clinical treatment
response. It also showed promising tendencies in increasing before physical manifestation of relapse. Results investigating the prognostic properties of naive concentrations of IL12p40 in patients were weak to inconclusive. In conclusion, the findings show a promising clinical significance in using IL12p40 as a new biomarker to measure treatment response in cL patients. Further research on the biomarker’s ability to interpret prognosis is warranted.