Immune response to a recombinant fragment of the CagA protein of Helicobacter pylori in blood donors and patients with gastric cancer: relation to ABO(H) blood group phenotype, stage of the disease and tumor morphology

Abstract

IgG immune response to CagA was evaluated by enzyme-linked imunosorbent assay (ELISA) using a recombinant fragment of CagA as antigen in 171 patients with gastric cancer and 298 blood donors to determine whether it could be related to the ABO(H) blood group phenotype, stage of cancer or tumor morphology. The CagA-ELISA showed a good specificity (93.5%) and sensitivity (88.5%) as compared with immunoblotting for blot CagA-negative and -positive donors. The Helicobacter pylori seropositive blood group A donors revealed the lowest proportion (37.6%) of strong responders to CagA: A<O (51.2%)<B (56.9%)<AB (62.5%). The proportion of strong responders to CagA was significantly lower among the H. pylori-seropositive patients with non-cardial cancer (35.4%) than in donors (48.8%). A significant suppression of immune response to CagA was found in the patients with advanced cancer. The proportion of CagA strong responders was higher at the first stage of gastric cancer in only blood group O and A individuals as compared with related controls. The overall CagA seroprevalence was not influenced by tumor histology. Thus, the IgG immune response to CagA is dependent on the ABO(H) blood group phenotype of the host and the stage of cancer. The host-dependent differences in the immune response to CagA may be more pronounced than those related to the putative disease-specific features of the H. pylori infection.

Risk of Gastric Cancer and Peptic Ulcers in Relation to ABO Blood Type: A Cohort Study

“…In addition to confirming that individuals with blood group A are at a slightly increased risk of stomach cancer, we have, quite strikingly, also shown that individuals with blood group O have a clearly elevated risk of hospitalization for gastric and duodenal ulcers compared with the other blood groups. Although no definitive conclusions can be drawn from this strictly observational investigation, with no access to data about H. pylori infection, a possible explanation is that these observations may result from different susceptibilities and immunologic responses to such infection (8,15,(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35).…”

ABO Blood Groups and Risk of Cancer: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…Some studies included multiple cancer sites, and we analyzed these data separately by site, and the total number of studies by site is 123. Among these studies, we identified 36 studies reported results on gastric cancer (AIRD et al, 1953;AIRD et al, 1954;BILLINGTON, 1956;BUCKWALTER et al, 1958;EISENBERG et al, 1958;MACMAHON et al, 1958;BIRNBAUM et al, 1959;BEASLEY et al, 1960;DOLL et al, 1960;BECKMAN et al, 1961;COTTER et al, 1961;NEWMAN et al, 1961;Hartmann et al, 1964;LISKER et al, 1964;Hoskins et al, 1965;Macafee et al, 1967;Glober et al, 1971;van Wayjen et al, 1973;Newell et al, 1974;Akumabor et al, 1986;Kurtenkov et al, 1995;Klaamas et al, 1999;Su et al, 2001;Kamlesh et al, 2005;El et al, 2007;Edgren et al, 2010;Akhtar et al, 2010;Qiu et al, 2011;Gong et al, 2012;Song et al, 2013), 13 studies on pancreatic cancer (AIRD et al, 1960;Newell et al, 1974;Annese et al, 1990;Wolpin et al, 2009;Greer et al, 2010;Wolpin et al, 2010;Ben et al, 2011;Engin et al, 2012;…”

Association between the ABO blood group and risk of common cancers

“…In order to validate our results of gastric cancer, we further performed a meta-analysis to assess these associations (6,(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18). A total of 9 studies were included according to the inclusion criteria.…”