Increased expression of interleukin‐23 associated with progression of colorectal cancer

Background and Objectives The prognostic significance of interleukin‐23 in colorectal cancer remains unclear. We designed this study to investigate the association between colorectal cancer and interleukin‐23 (IL‐23) or interleukin‐23 receptor (IL‐23R) expression and the resulting clinical features and survival. Methods Immunohistochemical staining was performed for IL‐23 and IL‐23R in colorectal cancer samples. H‐score was calculated to compare the expression of IL‐23 and IL‐23R. The median of H‐score was used as the cut‐off value to separate patients into high or low expression groups. The differences in clinicopathological features were evaluated. Cox regression hazard ratios were used for survival analysis. Results A total of 129 colorectal cancer patients were enrolled. H‐score for the late TNM stage patients was higher than that for the early TNM stage patients (P = 0.002). Patients with high IL‐23 expression were associated with advanced pathological T category (P