بررسی مقادیر سرمی اینترفرون گاما، اینترلوکین 12 و درصد سلولهای ایمنی CD8، CD4 و NK در زنان مبتلا به سرطان پستان متاستاتیک، غیرمتاستاتیک و افراد سالم

    Background & Aim: The immune system is quite capable to combat tumors and many immunological parameters including cytokines such as IL-12 & IFN-γ play major roles in this regard. IL-12 is also the major cytokine responsible for the differentiation of TH1 cells, which are potent producers of IFN-γ, IFN-γ in turn has a powerful enhancing effect on the ability of phagocytes to produce IL-12 as well as having an important role in cellular immune response. In this study the serum concentration of IL-12 & IFN-γ and percentage of IFN-γ producing cells(CD4+, CD8+, NK cells) in metastatic & nonmetastatic breast cancer patients and healthy adults was evaluated, with the aim of finding out the possible correlation between cytokine levels with disease stage and progression. Since cytokines are produced by all of these cells, cell enumeration may help to find out whether changes in cytokine levels is due to change in the cell number or their function has been altered during disease progression. Patients and Methods: Whole blood samples were taken from 50 breast cancer patients prior to therapeutic manipulation who were admitted to Dr. Shariaty & Day general hospitals. Also 26 healthy people were selected as control and blood was taken similarly. According to disease stage patients were classified into non-metastatic(stage I, II) and metastatic(stage III, IV) groups. 30 patients were non metastatic and 20 patients were in metastatic stages respectively. Serum cytokines level(IFN-γ, IL-12) was measured by ELISA. Lymphocyte subpopulation percentage was measured by flow-cytometry using bichromatic specific antibodies(anti-CD4+/CD8+, anti-CD3/CD16+CD56). The research protocol is designed as a descriptive, comparative cross sectional study. The parametric findings were analysed by one way Anova test and the nonparametric data were analysed using Mann whitney and Kruskal Wallis statistical tests. Results: IL-12 level was increased significantly in metastatic group compared to controls(P=0.017), while IFN-γ levels were in the same range as controls. CD4+ lymphocyte percentage in nonmetastatic(P=0.022) and metastatic groups(P=0.037) was decreased significantly compared to control, but there was no significant difference in CD8+ and NK cell numbers. Conclusion: Despite the decrease in percentage of CD4+ lymphocytes in patients(due to activation of compensative hemostatic system and increase in IL-12), there was no change in IFN- level. It seems that increase in serum IL-12 levels correlates with disease progression. However serum IFN-γ level has no effect on disease progression and as a whole no prominent failure was recorded in the cellular immune response of brease cancer patients as compared to normal individuals.