Objective:Anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibody is an important biomarker as-sociated with the diagnosis and prognosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Different studies showed inconsistency in the relationship between anti-CCP antibody titers and RA disease activity. Therefore, we investigated the association between anti-CCP antibody with the possibility of achieving treatment target and flare.Methods:The enrolled RA patients must be anti-CCP antibody positive at baseline, and had at least one test result of anti-CCP antibody during follow-up at least one year after the baseline. The patients were divided into declined group and non-declined group according to the decrease of anti-CCP antibody titer over 10% or not during follow-up from the baseline. Single factor comparison, Pearson correlation, Spearman correlation and Kendall correlation analysis were used.Results:A total of 124 patients were included in this study. Sixty-five and 59 patients were in anti-CCP antibody declined and non-declined groups, respectively. At the end of the follow-up, the proportion of patients who achieved clinical remission or low disease activity were 78%(51/65) and 68% (40/59)in the declined and the non-declined groups, respectively ( P=0.181). The changes of Disease Activity Score with 28 joint (DAS28)-C-reaction protein (CRP), DAS28-erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), tender joint count (TJC) and CRP in the declined group were significantly greater than those of the non-declined group ( P values <0.05). There was no positive correlation between anti-CCP antibody titer and several disease activity indicators at baseline ( r values <0.3, P values >0.05). The changes of anti-CCP antibody titers during the follow-up were also not correlated with changes in disease activity (but r values <0.3, P values <0.05). Meanwhile, both the baseline anti-CCP antibody titers and the changes of the anti-CCP antibody titers during follow-up were neither correlated with whether the patient achieved clinical remission or low disease activity at the end of the follow-up nor whether relapse happened. Conclusion:There is no significant correlation between anti-CCP antibody levels at baseline and disease activity, achievement of treatment target, or recurrence after treatment. The value of anti-CCP antibody in assessing disease activity, predicting treatment response, and predicting relapse needs to be confirmed in further large-scale prospective studies.

Objective:To investigate the relationship between systemic immune-inflammation index (SII) and the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients treated with radical radiotherapy and to predict the prognosis of the patients using the SII combined with clinical staging.Methods:A retrospective analysis was conducted for 248 patients with esophageal cancer who were admitted to the Department of Radiotherapy in the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University between 2014 and 2016. These patients included 146 males and 102 females, with a median age of 67 years. Among them, 134 patients received concurrent chemotherapy and 114 patients received radiotherapy alone. The SII before radiotherapy was defined as platelet count × neutrophil count/lymphocyte count. The patients were divided into a low-SII group and a high-SII group according to the optimal cutoff value of pretreatment SII determined by the receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve. Survival analysis was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method, and the Cox proportional hazards model was used for multivariate analysis. For these patients, the prognosis effects and the predictive value for survival of different SII levels combined with TNM staging were compared.Results:According to the ROC curves, the optimal cutoff value of SII before radiotherapy was 740.80. Based on this number, the patients were divided into a low-SII group (< 740.80, 150 cases) and a high-SII group (≥ 740.80, 98 cases). The objective response rate of the low-SII group was significantly higher than that of the high-SII group (86.0% vs 75.5%, χ2=4.39, P=0.036). The 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival (OS) rates of the low-SII group were 78.6%, 45.6%, and 32.3%, respectively. These rates were significantly higher than the corresponding rates of the high-SII group, which were 71.0%, 28.3%, and 16.4% ( χ2=11.22, P=0.001), respectively. Moreover, the 1-, 3- and 5-year progression-free survival (PFS) rates of the low-SII group were 67.0%, 36.9%, and 32.0%, respectively. Again, these rates were significantly higher than those of the high-SII group, which were 45.5%, 17.5%, and 12.5% ( χ2=15.38, P < 0.001), respectively. Multivariate analysis showed that TNM staging, treatment method, and SII were independent prognostic factors for OS and PFS ( HR=1.39-1.60, P<0.05). Patients with low SII and early clinical staging had a better prognosis than other subgroups ( χ2=13.68, 13.43, P=0.001). The area under curve (AUC) of SII combined with TNM staging (0.70) was higher than that of SII (0.63) and TNM staging (0.62) ( Z=2.48, 2.57, P < 0.05). Conclusions:Pretreatment SII has a high predictive value for the prognosis of esophageal cancer after radiotherapy, and higher SII indicates a worse prognosis. Thus, combining SII with TNM staging can improve the prediction accuracy of the prognosis of esophageal cancer patients.