F-163 Analyses on the clinical usefulness of natural killer cell activity in non small cell lung cancer patients = F-163 Analyses on the clinical usefulness of natural killer cell activity in non small cell lung cancer patients

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Background: Natural killer(NK) cells are one of the innate immunity cells and are involved in the elimination of malignancy cells. Low activity of NK cells has been associated with the various cancer. We evaluated the clinical implication of serum NK cell activity(NKA) in non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC).
Method: In this prospective, cross-sectional study, we enrolled 40 healthy controls, 40 benign lung disease patients and 67 NSCLC patients (stage I: 20, stage II: 10, stage III: 17, stage IV: 20). Serum NKA was measured by NK VueⓡGOLD assay detecting interferon-γ released from NK cells. NKA was compared by non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test.
Results: We found a significant decrease in NKA of NSCLC group compared to other groups but there was no significant difference between control and benign lung disease group. (control vs benign lung disease vs NSCLC; 1341±102.8 vs 1219±116.0 vs 744.8±86.21pg/mL)(p＜0.0001) NKA of advanced stage NSCLC patients was lower than early stage NSCLC patients. (stage I, II vs stage III, IV; 1298±119.0 vs 295.9±54.41pg/mL)(p＜0.0001)
Conclusion: Impaired NKA was associated with NSCLC but not with other lung disease. NKA decreased further in advanced stage NSCLC than early stage NSCLC. NKA of early stage of NSCLC patients had no wide difference from control and benign lung disease subjects. It suggests that reduced NKA is involved in progression and metastasis of NSCLC. Clinically, we expect that NKA measurement might be helpful in assessing the stage of NSCLC but not in screening NSCLC.