High CHI3L1 expression is associated with glioma patient survival

BACKGROUND: Survival of glioma patients with the same tumor histology and grade can vary significantly, and some low-grade gliomas transform to a more malignant phenotype. There is a need of molecular signatures, which are better predictors of the patient diagnosis, outcome of treatment, and prognosis than the diagnosis provided by histopathology. We propose CHI3L1 mRNA expression as a prognostic biomarker for patients with glioma. METHODS: We measured CHI3L1 expression with quantitative real time-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) in the cohort of 98 patients with different grade glioma: 10 grade I pylocytic astrocytomas, 30 grade II diffuse astrocytomas, 20 grade III anaplastic astrocytomas, and 38 grade IV astrocytomas (glioblastomas). Statistical analyses were conducted to investigate the association between CHI3L1 mRNA expression levels and patient clinical variables. RESULTS: We demonstrated that mRNA expression of CHI3L1 was evidently higher in glioblastoma than in lower grade glioma tissues. We evaluated correlations between CHI3L1 expression, clinicopathological characteristics, and the outcomes of the patients. Patients with high CHI3L1 expression had a shorter overall survival (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Findings presented in our study showed that increased mRNA level of CHI3L1 could be associated with the progression of astrocytoma and poor patient survival not only for glioblastoma, but for lower grade astrocytoma tumors as well. Further investigation will be required to evaluate CHI3L1 value as a molecular marker for astrocytoma prognoses and for novel treatment strategies against all grade astrocytomas.