Abstract: OBJECTIVE: To investigate relationships between clinicopathological characteristics and curative effect of combined radio-with chemo-therapy for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with superoxide dismutase (SOD). METHODS: 174 newly diagnosed advanced NSCLC patients in the Department of Oncology,Affiliated Hospital of Hebei University of Engineering were selected in 2018 as the research subjects,and 80 healthy subjects were selected as controls. Peripheral blood and serum samples were collected from patients before they had any therapy. Expression of SOD in different tumors was analyzed via gene expression profiling interactive analysis (GEPIA) and activities of SOD in serum were detected via WST-1. Then,relationships between their expressions,clinicopathological chara cteristics and curative effect of therapy were analyzed. RESULTS: On-line analyses via GEPIA show that the expression of SOD in 19 kinds of tumors was abnormal among 33 kinds of tumors. Expression of SOD in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) and lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) were significantly lower than that in the control group (P < 0.05). The results of WST-1 show that SOD activity in serum of patients was lower than that in the control group (P < 0.05),and there was no difference in serum SOD activity between different ages,genders and pathological patterns of patients (P > 0.05). However,there was significant difference in serum SOD activities between smoking history and pathological grades (P < 0.05). SOD activities were significantly lower in smoking patients compared with non-smoking patients (P < 0.05);and in patients with poor differentiating tumors compared with patients having better differentiating tumors (P < 0.05). SOD activities were positively related to the curative effect of combined therapies (r=0.554,P < 0.05),and it was higher in patients with effective treatment than patients with failed treatment (P < 0.05). Meanwhile,the overall survival in the high activity SOD group was higher than that in the low activity group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: SOD activities in serum of patients with advanced NSCLC were significantly decreased. The activities were affected by patients' smoking history,pathological grades,as well as to curative effects of combined therapies and OS. Therefore,SOD can be a potential indicator for evaluating curative effects and prognosis of NSCLC.

Key words: non-small cell lung cancer, superoxide dismutase, clinicopathologic characteristics, curative effect, overall survival