ANNALS EXPRESS: Autotaxin and sIL-2R levels in cerebrospinal fluids are useful for the diagnosis of central nervous system invasion caused by hematological malignancies.

BACKGROUND: Invasion of the central nervous system (CNS) by hematological malignancies is diagnosed by cytological analyses of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) or diagnostic imaging, while quantitative biomarkers for CNS invasion are not available and needed to be developed. Methods; In this study, we measured the levels of autotaxin (ATX) and soluble IL-2 receptor (sIL-2R) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and evaluated their usefulness as biomarkers for CNS invasion.

RESULTS: We observed that both the ATX and sIL-2R levels in CSF were higher in subjects with CNS invasion than in those without, and the CSF levels were independent from the serum levels of these biomarkers. ROC analyses revealed that the sIL-2R level in CSF was a strong discriminator of CNS invasion in subjects with hematological malignancies, while the ATX level in CSF also had a strong ability to discriminate CNS invasion when the subjects were limited to those with lymphoma. The combined measurement of ATX and sIL-2R in CSF improved the sensitivity without notably reducing the specificity for CNS invasion in subjects with lymphoma when CNS invasion was diagnosed in cases where either value was beyond the respective cut-off value.

CONCLUSION: These results suggest the possible usefulness of sIL-2R and ATX levels in CSF for the diagnosis of CNS invasion. Keywords autotaxin, soluble IL-2 receptor, cerebrospinal fluids, central nervous system invasion, lymphoma.