Clinical significance of elevated serum soluble CD40 ligand levels as a diagnostic and prognostic tumor marker for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Table 6 Univariate and adjusted-multivariate Cox proportional-hazards estimates for patients with PDAC in the validation dataset

Univariate analysis	HRs	95% CI	p -value
Gender (male vs. female)	0.583	0.280-1.211	0.148
Age (≤40, > 40 & ≤60, > 60)	0.649	0.359-1.175	0.154
T-stage (T1, T2, T3 ,T4)	1.428	0.902-2.261	0.129
Node metastasis (N0, N1)	1.960	0.810-4.745	0.136
Distant metastasis (M0, M1)	3.558	1.695-7.469	0.001
Unresectability (resectable vs. unresectable)	2.917	1.025-8.298	0.045
Tumor Size (≤2 cm, > 2 cm & ≤ 5 cm, > 5 cm)	2.419	1.191-4.917	0.015
Histological differentiation (Well, Moderate, Poor; n)	1.154	0.777-1.714	0.478
Karnofsky performance status scale (continuous variable)*	0.962	0.936-0.988	0.005
High-serum CA19-9 (≤40 U/ml vs. > 40 U/ml)	1.811	0.788-4.160	0.162
High-serum CEA (≤3 ng/ml vs. > 3 ng/ml)	2.137	1.062-4.298	0.033
High-serum sCD40L (≤35,000 ng/ml vs. > 35,000 ng/ml)	2.468	1.162-5.242	0.019
Multivariate analysis	HRs ^†	95% CI	p -value
Distant metastasis (M0, M1)	3.469	1.375-8.749	0.008
Unresectability (resectable vs. unresectable)	0.588	0.168-2.060	0.406
Tumor Size (≤2 cm, > 2 cm & ≤ 5 cm, > 5 cm)	2.454	1.075-5.602	0.033
Karnofsky performance status scale (continuous variable)*	0.969	0.940-0.998	0.038
High-serum CEA (≤3 ng/ml vs. > 3 ng/ml)	1.354	0.549-3.340	0.511
High-serum sCD40L (≤35,000 ng/ml vs. > 35,000 ng/ml)	2.509	1.038-6.067	0.041

HR, hazard ratio of mortality; CI, confidence interval; sCD40L, soluble CD40 ligand; CA19-9, cancer antigen 19–9; CEA, carcinoembryonic antigen.
p-value of < 0.05 is considered to be statistically significant.
*This scale was evaluated at diagnosis before treatment start.
^†Hazard ratios (HRs) were adjusted for other variables by the “enter” method in multivariate Cox analysis.

ISSN: 1479-5876