Adaptive Immunity in Breast Cancer Iraqian Women

This study aimed to compare some of the immunological parameters in patients with cancer with the healthy group such parameters include study the level of immunoglobulines IgG, IgM, IgA in different tumor stages and to study the number of CD4 and CD8 and the CD4/CD8 ratio. This prospective study was based on 50 female patients with carcinoma of the breast. The 50 female patients were attending the radiotherapy and nuclear medicine hospital and central public health laboratories. Their ages were ranged from 30 to 72 years, compared with 20 healthy women as a control group. This study was extended through a period from September 2015 to January 2017. The 50 female patients were classified into four groups according to Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) classification, stage I includes 6 patients, stage II includes 9 patients, stage III includes 16 patients and stage IV includes 19 patients. Highest incidence of breast cancer was at age 40-49, with a mean age of 46 years. The mean serum level of IgA showed no significant difference between patient groups and healthy control group. However mean serum IgG& IgM levels showed a significant increase in patient at stage II, compared to those of the other stages and control group (P=0.014 and P=0.02 respectively). In contrast, patients at stage IV showed decrease of IgM& IgG levels as compared to healthy control group (P=0.093 and P=0.070 respectively). By using direct immunoflourescent assay (IFA), the CD4+, CD8+, T-cells were counted. It was found from the present study that the number of CD4+ cells decrease with the progress of the disease to reach its lowest number at stage IV (P less than 0.001), on the other hand, the present results demonstrated opposite finding of CD8 cells that started low in number at early stages of the disease to reach it's highest level at stage IV (P=0.049).