Selective decrease in serum immunoglobulin G1: A tissue nonspecific tumor marker detecting early stages of gynecologic malignant disease with high efficiency

Abstract

Thus, the determination of the percent of IgG1 by itself and/or in combination with conventional markers may provide relevant information regarding the noninvasive detection of early stages of gynecologic carcinoma.

The IgG1/G2 subclass shift – a sensitive, tissue non-specific marker for malignancy. Diagnostic performance with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck

“…Patients afflicted with benign diseases (benign tumours or inflammations) of the tissues so far investigated sometimes showed a similar trend (Kronberger et al, 1994;Schauenstein et al, 1996;Schauenstein et al, 1997), but consistently differed from cancer patients with the same level of significance as did healthy controls. Even though our experience at present does not indicate any significant association of the IgG1/G2 shift with other common diseases, further studies are under way to examine this parameter in selected immunopathological conditions.…”

“…Experiments are presently under way to examine the hypothesis that malignant tumours may modulate the IgG subclass biosynthesis by the expression of certain cytokines and/or their soluble receptors, which are involved in IgG subclass regulation (Kawano et al, 1994). Whatever the mechanisms are, the regulation of IgG subclasses apparently is extremely sensitive to respective signals derived from malignant cells, which is reflected by the high sensitivity of the phenomenon, particularly for early stages of various tumours in humans (Kronberger et al, 1994;Schauenstein et al, 1996Schauenstein et al, , 1997 including SCC-HN (see present data), and in the rat model (Weblacher et al, 1993). An attractive feature of the IgG subclass shift as tumour marker are the extremely small variation ranges of the single values in normal controls and tumour patients, as compared with several orders of magnitude often observed with conventional tumour markers.…”

“…In previous reports it was shown that patients with malignant diseases of various tissue origin exhibit a characteristic and highly significant alteration in the subclass composition of serum IgG, consisting in a reduction in %IgG1 and an increase in %IgG2. This phenomenon has been reported in patients suffering from carcinomas of the female breast (Kronberger et al, 1994), various locations of the female reproductive tract (Schauenstein et al, 1996), and of the colo-rectal region (Schauenstein et al, 1997), and it turned out to exhibit diagnostic sensitivities and specificities comparable to, or -particularly at early tumour stages -far higher than conventional serological tumour markers. Patients with benign tumorous or inflammatory diseases of the respective organs differed in their mean %IgG1 and %IgG2 values from cancer patients with the same high significance as did healthy controls.…”

Reactive disulfide bonds in immunoglobulin G. A unique feature in serum proteins of different species

“…4a ), it was to be expected that the decrease in (SS)* signalled a corresponding shift in the percentage of IgG1 in total IgG of cancer patients. This was recently confirmed by direct determination of lgG1 and total IgG using quantitative affinity chromatography [23,24]. The decrease of%IgG1 turned out to be a new and highly sensitive serological tumor marker [25], particularly with carcinomas of the female reproductive tract [24] and mammary gland [23].…”

“…This was recently confirmed by direct determination of lgG1 and total IgG using quantitative affinity chromatography [23,24]. The decrease of%IgG1 turned out to be a new and highly sensitive serological tumor marker [25], particularly with carcinomas of the female reproductive tract [24] and mammary gland [23]. An analogous effect was observed in tumor bearing rats, where the subclass affected was again the one carrying the (SS)* group, i.e.…”