Can natural killer cell activity help screen patients requiring a biopsy for the diagnosis of prostate cancer?

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the usefulness of natural killer cell activity (NKA) in diagnosing prostate cancer (PC). Materials and Methods: The medical records of patients who underwent transrectal prostate biopsy (TRBx) at Korea University Ansan Hospital between May 2017 and December 2017 were retrospectively reviewed. NKA levels were measured using NK Vue® Tubes (ATgen, Sungnam, Korea). All blood samples were obtained at 8 AM on the day of biopsy. Patients with other malignancies, chronic infl ammatory conditions, high prostate-specifi c antigen (PSA) level (>20ng/mL), or history of taking 5-alphareductase inhibitor or testosterone replacement therapy were excluded. Results: A total of 102 patients who underwent TRBx for PC diagnosis were enrolled. Among them, 50 were diagnosed with PC. Signifi cant differences in age and NKA level were observed between the PC and no-PC groups. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis showed that the optimal cutoff of NKA level for the prediction of PC was 500pg/dL, with a sensitivity of 68.0% and a specifi city of 73.1%. In addition, NKA level (0.630) had the greatest area under the ROC curve compared to those for the ratio of total PSA to free PSA (0.597) and PSA density (0.578). Conclusions: The results of this pilot study revealed that low NKA and high PSA levels were likely to be associated with a positive TRBx outcome. NKA detection was easy and improved the diagnostic accuracy of PC.

Natural killer cell activity in metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer patients treated with enzalutamide

“…Tables 3 and 4 show the results of the both univariate and adjusted Cox regression analysis, respectively. Relevantly, equivalent results were obtained when employing two other cut-offs from earlier studies on PCa patients (151 pg/mL 23 and 500 pg/mL 24 ). Both univariate and multivariate analyses of the outcomes data for those cutoffs are summarized in Tables S2 and S3 (Fig.…”

“…However, this study is the first one to employ this pre-defined cut-off on patients diagnosed with mCRPC. To validate the current findings, two other cut-offs obtained from earlier studies on PCa patients (151 23 and 500 pg/ml 24 ) were also tested for outcomes data on the current cohort. Using these, we still found that patients in group 2 showed a shorter time to both rPFS and TTT, thus indicating that 250 pg/ml IFNγ is in fact a relevant cut-off for studying mCRPC.…”

Clinical Detection of Peripheral Blood Natural Killer Cell Activity

“…Barkin J et al [21] found that this method was used to detect NK cell activity, and the results showed that subjects with low NK cell activity values were more likely to have positive results in prostate cancer biopsy. Tae BS et al [34] also proved that the NK cell activity detected by this technology can help screen patients who need a biopsy to diagnose prostate cancer with high accuracy. Many clinical research institutions have adopted this technology for clinical research on NK cell activity detection (NCT02291198, NCT03422120, NCT02661776), and it has good applications in colorectal cancer pre-screening and postoperative immune function judgment for head and neck cancer.…”

Bladder Cancer highlighted

“…Dr. Tae and Collegues ( 7 ) from Korea studied on page 244 the usefulness of natural killer cell activity (NKA) in diagnosing of prostate cancer (PC) in 102 patients and concluded that low NKA and high PSA levels were likely to be associated with a positive TRBx outcome. NKA detection was easy and improved the diagnostic accuracy of prostate cancer.…”