PMID: 6972628Jul 1, 1981Paper

Indomethacin enhancement of immunocompetence in melanoma patients

Surgery
A B Tilden, C M Balch

Abstract

Lymphocyte responses to the mitogens concanavalin A (Con A) and phytohemagglutinin (PHA) are important in vitro parameters of immunocompetence in cancer patients. The tempo and intensity of this response is regulated by monocytes. We found that the blood lymphocyte response to one or both of these mitogens was significantly depressed in 32 of 33 melanoma patients compared to 29 normal control subjects. However, these responses were significantly enhanced when the drug indomethacin, a prostaglandin synthetase inhibitor, was added to cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from the melanoma patients, but not from the normal control subjects. For example, at a 1 microgram/ml dose of Con A, the mean response of melanoma patients increased from 56% to 81% of the normal mean response, whereas at 20 micrograms/ml PHA the mitogen response increased from 57% to 77% of normal when PMBC were incubated with indomethacin (P less than 0.001). Overall, indomethacin enhanced the mitogen responses of melanoma patients by 35% to 85%, whereas indomethacin increased the response in normal subjects by only 5% to 15%. The mitogen response of monocyte-depleted ER+ lymphocytes for melanoma patients was equivalent to that of normal contr...Continue Reading

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