Clinical Significance of the Interleukin 24 mRNA Level in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma and Its Subgroups: An In Silico Investigation

IL24 mRNA is known to have an apoptotic effect on cancer cells but not on noncancer cells. However, the expression level of the IL24 mRNA in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and its subgroups is rarely studied. In this study, the clinical implication of IL24 mRNA was evaluated in the common subgroups of HNSCC, including oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), and laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) for analysis. Substantial IL24 mRNA expression data were calculated from several databases, such as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), ArrayExpress, Sequence Read Archive (SRA), ONCOMINE, and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases. We ultimately collected a total of 41 microarrays and RNA-seq including 1,564 HNSCC and 603 noncancer tissue samples. IL24 mRNA was highly expressed in OSCC, LSCC, and NPC as shown by the separated standard mean difference (SMD), as well as HNSCC as a whole part (SMD = 1.47, 95% confdence interval (CI) = 1.24−1.70, P<0.0001). In all subgroups, the IL24 mRNA upregulation had the ability to distinguish cancer from noncancer tissue with area under the curves (AUCs) of the summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC) higher than 0.85. In conclusion, IL24 mRNA may be used as a potential marker for cancer screening, and its clinical diagnostic value needs to be further studied. It also provides a new idea for the treatment of the IL24 gene in HNSCC and its subgroups in the future.