Soichiro Ishihara,
Hisae Iinuma, Yoshihisa Fukushima,
Takuya Akahane,
Atsushi Horiuchi,
Ryu Shimada,
Hajime Shibuya,
Tamuro Hayama,
Hideki Yamada,
Keijiro Nozawa,
Keiji Matsuda,
Toshiaki Watanabe
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ABSTRACT: The response of rectal cancer to preoperative chemoradiotherapy (PRT) varies widely among patients, and predictors of the response remain to be elucidated. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether radiation-induced apoptosis (RIA) of peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) reflects the underlying intrinsic radiosensitivity of rectal cancer.
Forty-one patients with clinical T3-4, M0 low rectal cancers, treated with PRT and curative surgery, were retrospectively studied. PBLs were obtained from blood samples of the patients, irradiated at 0, 2, 8, and 16 Gy in vitro, and analyzed for RIA by flow cytometry using Annexin V (AV) and propidium iodide (PI). The correlation of the RIA of PBLs and histological regression of rectal cancer in response to PRT was examined.
Both the proportions of AV+/PI- PBLs (early apoptosis) and AV+/PI + PBLs (late apoptosis) were significantly higher in patients with high histological regression than in those with low histological regression. Age, sex, tumor size, and clinical T and N stages did not affect the RIA of PBLs.
This study showed that the RIA of PBLs is correlated with the histological regression of rectal cancer in response to PRT and suggested that the radiosensitivity of rectal cancer might be estimated by the RIA of PBLs.
Annals of Surgical Oncology 09/2011; 19(4):1192-8. · 4.17 Impact Factor
