Monocyte chemotaxis in patients with nonseminomatous testicular carcinoma. Effect of chemotherapy.

The chemotactic responsiveness of blood monocytes was tested in 16 patients with nonseminomatous testicular carcinoma before, during, and after chemotherapy. All the patients initially had monocyte chemotaxis within the normal range. No correlation with the histology of the tumor, the clinical stage, or the presence in serum of alpha-fetoprotein and human chorionic gonadotropin was observed. Plasma from the patients did not inhibit the chemotaxis of normal monocytes, and serum from the patients contained no chemotactic factor inhibitor. During intensive chemotherapy with cis-platinum, bleomycin, and vinblastine a reversible defect in chemotaxis occurred without correlation to the development of fever. Two months after the completion of chemotherapy the chemotactic responsiveness was unchanged compared with pretreatment values. In conclusion, this study shows normal monocyte chemotaxis in patients with testicular carcinoma, which is in contrast to reports on a variety of other solid tumors.