Interferon activity and its characterization in the sera of patients with head and neck cancer.

The interferon (IFN) assay of the sera from the 40 patients with head and neck cancer was performed by the plaque-reduction assay with vesicular stomatitis virus in FL cells derived from human amniotic membrane. The patients mainly had Stage III or IV lesion without distant metastasis, and previously had not received any cancer therapy. All of the patients were histologically diagnosed as squamous cell carcinoma. When the serum IFN activity was characterized by acid treatment, significant increases of IFN-alpha/beta/gamma (n = 24, P less than 0.05) and acid-labile IFN (n = 24, P less than 0.001), and significant decrease of acid-stable IFN (n = 24, P less than 0.001) in the cancer patients of 50-to-79-year age group were found, as compared with those in the normal controls of the same age group (n = 20). When IFN titers including various immunologic parameters of the patients and normal controls were simultaneously assayed prior to the beginning of the cancer therapy, the titers of IFN-alpha/beta/gamma, acid-stable IFN, and acid-labile IFN were significantly correlated with some immunologic parameters such as natural killer (NK) activity, the absolute number of T gamma lymphocytes, the percentages of beta- and gamma-globulin, and the amounts of IgA, IgG, IgM, and beta 2 microglobulin. To define further the nature of this IFN, both sera of the patients and normal donors of 50-to-79-year age group were characterized by a neutralization assay with an antiserum to HuIFN-alpha and HUIFN-beta. The IFN activity left when the testing sera were neutralization with these antisera was expressed as gamma-like IFN. The titers of gamma-like IFN in the sera of patients (n = 24, P less than 0.0001) showed a highly significant increase as compared with the normal controls (n = 20). When the correlation between prognosis of the disease and titers of serum IFN were investigated by measuring gamma-like IFN and acid-stable IFN in the sera of patients, all of nine patients with good prognosis after the cancer treatment showed significant decreased levels of gamma-like IFN (P less than 0.01) and acid-stable IFN (P less than 0.05) as compared with those on the time before cancer therapy. On the other hand, titers of gamma-like IFN in the sera of six patients with recurrent disease showed a significant increase as compared with those on the IFN measurement before cancer therapy (P less than 0.05).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)