[Natural killer (NK) activity of the peripheral blood lymphocytes in cancer patients]

In this paper, the NK activity of peripheral blood lymphocytes from tumor patients by 125I-UdR release test was reported. The results showed significantly lower NK activity in patients with advanced malignant tumor than that in normal controls, and that the impaired NK activity was back to normal level several years after radical operation. In patients with liver cancer, the NK activity could be increased by treatment with specific iRNA. The data suggest that the evaluation NK activity might be valuable for predicting the prognosis of cancer patients.