Depression of the generation of cell-mediated cytotoxicity in regional lymph nodes of patients with gastric carcinoma.

The capacity to generate cytotoxic cells in mixed cell culture was studied on the regional lymph node cells (LNC) from patients with gastric carcinoma, in comparison with that of the similar lymph node cells from patients with benign lesions. Generation of cytotoxic cells in LNC from cancer patients was significantly depressed, as compared to either that in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBM) from the same patient or that in LNC from patients with benign lesions, whereas no significant difference between those in PBM and LNC was observed in patients with benign lesions. The addition of LNC from cancer patients to autologous PBM did not result in suppression of the cytotoxic response. There was no significant difference between the ability to produce interleukin 2 (IL 2) in LNC from patients with carcinoma and benign lesions. However, OKT11+ and OKT3+ cells in LNC from cancer patients were significantly decreased without any alteration of the OKT4/OKT8 ratio, as compared to that from patients with benign lesions. In contrast, B-1+ cells were significantly increased. These results indicated that the relative inactivity of the generation of cytotoxic effector T cells in LNC from patients with gastric carcinoma might be partially related to the reduction of T cell population in the regional lymph nodes.