Immune evaluation with skin testing. A study of testicular, prostatic, and bladder neoplasms

Fifty patients with testicular carcinoma, 45 with prostatic neoplasm, 84 with bladder carcinoma, and 13 with benign bladder papilloma were evaluated for skin reactivity to DNCB and other intradermal antigens. Correlation between pathologic staging and skin-test reactivity was sought. Reaction to DNCB among patients with testis tumors was more significantly depressed by chemotherapy than by the extent of retroperitoneal or distant metastatic disease indicating that skin testing as a means of following the course of disease or of predicting survival may be limited by alterations caused by chemotherapy. DNCB reactivity did not correlate with the prognosis for the different stages of disease, but follow-up studies of individual patient survival are needed for substantiation. Depression of DNCB reactivity exists among patients with prostatic carcinoma whether the disease is localized or widely metastatic. Only lengthy follow-up will determine if there is any correlation of reactivity with survival in individual patients. DNCB reactivity among patients with bladder tumors shows progressive reduction with increasing stage disease and lends support to the evidence suggesting immune deficiency in patients with bladder neoplasm.