Plasma MIP-1β levels and skin toxicity in Japanese non-small cell lung cancer patients treated with the EGFR-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor, gefitinib

The MIP-1β levels were significantly lower in the patients with skin toxicity (16/24) as compared with those in the patients not showing any skin toxicity (59.1 ± 10.5 versus 119.0 ± 36.8; p = 0.042 by the two-sample t-test). The K-Nearest Neighbor Prediction (K = 3) showed the classification rate to be 75% for the prediction sets containing MIP-1β, IL-4 and IL-8. There were no significant associations between the levels of any of the cytokines measured and any other parameters, including the tumor response to the drug. In conclusion, the plasma MIP-1β level may be a useful predictor of the development of skin toxicity in patients receiving gefitinib treatment.