The respiratory burst of neutrophils, a prognostic parameter in head and neck cancer?

Flow cytometric measurements of the respiratory burst of granulocytes (PMN) from 27 patients with advanced carcinomas of the head and neck revealed two types of responses to a stimulus with phorbol myristate acetate (PMA) before, during, and after radiochemotherapy. (1) The majority (74%) of patients responded quantitatively normal (31-fold increase of fluorescence intensity after PMA stimulation, as in controls) but exhibited functional subpopulations in 63% of samples with varying degrees of hyperreactive PMN. (2) A subgroup of 7 patients did not respond to PMA before and during treatment ("nonresponders"), but in two cases responded after therapy. Survival analysis revealed a significantly (P less than 0.02) decreased mean survival time of nonresponders (36 weeks vs greater than 70 weeks in "responders"). Thus, the respiratory burst of PMN could serve as a prognostic parameter in head and neck cancer.