Circulating immune complexes in breast and lung cancer, before and after chemotherapy

Circulating immune complexes (CIC) levels were evaluated in two groups of cancerous patients to try to correlate CIC levels, tumor stage and chemotherapy received. There were 40 patients with Lung Cancer (LC) clinical stages III and IV; 60 patients with Breast Cancer (BC) stages II, III and IV and 38 normal controls. LC patients showed significant increase in CIC values before, during and after treatment as compared to controls, without any difference among groups under different treatment combinations and tumor stage. Stage II BC patients showed decreased CIC levels during treatment (p less than 0.01 vs initial value). This decrease was maintained after treatment (p less than 0.02). Stage III BC patients showed different behaviour according to treatment: those who only received chemotherapy (ADM + CTX) showed no significant differences during treatment, and those treated with ADM + CTX and megestol acetate (MA) displayed decreased CIC levels after treatment (p less than 0.05) reaching similar control values. Stage IV patients treated with ADM + CTX + MA returned to normal CIC values during treatment. These results proved that combined treatment of chemotherapy and hormone therapy diminished CIC levels in BC patients, while therapy given to LC patients did not present any modifications.