title: Continuous versus split-course irradiation for lung cancer. Immunological implications.
abstract: The therapeutical irradiation for lung cancer causes profound disturbances of host's general immunocompetence, the cellular immunodepression being the dominant finding. It is thought that split-course technique holds certain advantage over the continuous irradiation, since the former includes an interruption of 4 week duration, thus allowing the lymphopoietic system to recover to a certain degree. In this report, we compared the radiotherapy-due alterations of several parameters of cellular immunity (the number and function of total T cells, active T cells and the cells of monocyte/macrophage lineage), immediately after the completion of therapy in either continuously (n = 13) or split-course-irradiated (n = 12) lung cancer patients. All patients had received the total dose of 60 Gy. Both therapeutical techniques caused alterations of the parameters tested: the significant decrease of the total and active T cells and their proliferative responses, while the phagocytic activity and the number of mononuclear phagocytes were increased, the latter being affected to a lesser extent in split-course-treated patients. Our results suggest that both techniques have similar immunodepressant effect on the cellular immunity of lung cancer patients.
authors: Institute for Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, Beograd, Yugoslavia.
authors: L
authors: L
authors: Vucković-Dekić
authors: N
authors: N
authors: Stanojević-Bakić
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Dekić
authors: O
authors: O
authors: Frim
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006801:Humans; D007108:Immune Tolerance / Q000528:radiation effects*; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000276:immunology / Q000532:radiotherapy*; D008875:Middle Aged; D011878:Radiotherapy / Q000009:adverse effects