Inflammation and Stress: The Resemblance and Variance Between Atherosclerosis and Carcinogenesis—A Pilot Study

While atherosclerosis is a disease of vascular hypercholesterolemia, reports have also shown the presence of intracellular hypercholesterolemia in cancer tumor cells. Since the dietary cholesterol in the blood vessel is the major source of intracellular cholesterol, a low blood cholesterol level is maintained in people having carcinogenesis. Because of the variance found in blood cholesterol level, the carotid artery intimal media thickness (CIMT) was considered as a confirmation marker to distinguish these two diseases. 50 patients of each category and 25 disease-free healthy subjects were included in a single-center study. Subjects were classified into two groups viz., normoglycemic and hyperglycemic. Since both atherosclerosis and carcinogenesis are inflammatory, stressful diseases; the relative variations of plasma or serum concentrations of different characteristic discriminating markers related to inflammation and stress were evaluated in this study to compare the severity of stress between these two dreadful diseases. The respective inflammatory and stress markers were Ox-LDL, TNF-α, IL-10, Cortisol, PERK, and NF-kB. ELISA-based commercial kits were used for the assay of the respective parameters. Based on the relative severity of the bio-marker values, subjects were also divided into risk liable sub-groups. Linear regression analysis against serum low density lipoprotein (LDL) concentration for each of the inflammation (Ox-LDL, TNF-α, and IL-10) and stress (Cortisol, PERK, and NF-kB) factors was carried out for a clear outcome of the absolute severity of each component in the pathogenicity of these two disease processes. Calculated fold alarming severity earmarked hyperglycemic carcinogenesis as the most stressful alarming disease over the others.