A prognostic model predicts the risk of distant metastasis and death for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma based on pre-treatment interleukin 6 and clinical stage

•High level of IL-6 correlates with distant metastasis and death of NPC patients.•IL6 level is an unfavourable independent prognostic factor for NPC patients.•We raise a new prognostic model including IL6 level to predict NPC patients' outcome.

Because inflammation plays a critical role in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), this study aims to investigate the correlation between the pro-inflammation cytokine interleukin-6 (IL6) and the prognosis of NPC and develop a new prognostic model. IL6 levels were measured in the serum of 290 NPC patients by ELISA and the correlation between IL6 and prognosis of NPC was evaluated by Kaplan-Meier analysis and multivariate analysis. The results showed that elevated IL6 levels were positively correlated with poorer 9-year overall survival (OS), disease-free survival (DFS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) and lung metastasis-free survival (lung-MFS). IL6 level was an independent prognostic factor for OS, DFS, DMFS and lung-MFS. The CI-model based on TNM stage and IL6 level could better predict the OS, DFS, DMFS and lung-MFS of NPC patients. Here, the newly developed prognostic CI-model for predicting distant metastasis and death of NPC patients could facilitate patients consulting and individualized immunotherapy.