Effects of nutritional status on peripheral immune cells in patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Abstract

Background: The nutritional status affects gene expression in peripheral T lymphocytes; nevertheless, the link between nutritional status and immunity of cancer patients is unclear. The aim of the research was to evaluate the connection with nutritional parameters and the frequencies of T cells subsets on peripheral blood in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients. Methods: We enrolled 170 NSCLC patients and 53 healthy volunteers who were age- and gender-matched. The frequencies of circulating CD3+, CD4+, CD8+, naïve CD4+, memory CD4+, naïve CD8+, memory CD8+, and regulatory T lymphocytes were assessed by the way of flow cytometry. Nutritional parameters including albumin, globulin, albumin-to-globulin ratio (AGR), total protein (TP), pre-albumin (PA), body mass index (BMI), and prognostic nutritional index (PNI), were also evaluated.Results: Low globulin levels and high AGR were associated with high frequencies of naïve CD8+ T lymphocytes (P = 0.039 and P = 0.018). Obese (BMI ≥ 25) Compare with the non-obese (BMI < 25) patients, the percentages of CD8+ T lymphocytes in NSCLC patients had decreased (P = 0.026). Between in other nutritional parameters and the frequency of circulating lymphocyte subsets had no significant correlation.Conclusions: Our findings show that nutritional status should influence the frequencies of peripheral T cell subsets in NSCLC patients.