Squamous Cell Carcinoma Antigen, Circulating Immune Complexes, and Immunoglobulins in Monitoring Squamous Cell Carcinoma of Head and Neck

Abstract

This study investigates the clinical utility of squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCC-Ag), circulating immune complexes (CIC), and immunoglobulins (IgA, IgG, IgM) in the diagnosis, monitoring, and prognosis of 117 squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCC-HN) patients having local and/or systemic treatment. Serum marker levels were measured in a prospective study. SCC-Ag was positive in 28.2% of patients, the CIC in 63.2%, the IgA in 11.1%, the IgG in 15.4%, and the IgM in 9.44%. Statistically significant correlation was found between the initial SCC-Ag levels and tumor localization, whereas the CIC levels were increasing significantly with progressing disease stages. It was also found that the significant decrease of SCC-Ag, IgA, and CIC levels at the end of treatment was correlated with an increased incidence of disease-free status. The initial values of IgG and the disease stage were significantly correlated with a favorable treatment outcome. The pretreatment elevated SCC-Ag and IgM serum values showed a significant trend to predict a disease progression. Using a Cox proportional hazards model the IgG serum values, the primary site, and the disease stage were significant predictors for time to progression. The significant decrease of SCC-Ag, IgA, and CIC values at the completion of treatment was correlated with an increased incidence of disease-free status. This study indicates that only the estimation of SCC-Ag and in some degree the IgM and/or IgG is a potential tool for monitoring the efficacy of treatment or disease recurrence in SCC-HN.

Squamous cell carcinoma antigen as a prognostic marker and its correlation with clinicopathological features in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Moreover, another study presented data inconsistency was excluded . Eventually, eleven publications met the criteria for qualitative and quantitative syntheses in Figure …”

Circulating Immune complexes (CIC) as marker for disease progress in oral cancer

“…Presuming the involved antigens to be of malignancy-specific, serum CIC levels in cancer patients have been used for early diagnosis, metastatic spread, tumor burden, degree of aggressiveness, therapeutic response as well as prognosis. (9,13,15,16) Several factors become clear from the values given in Table 1. The mean levels of CIC in each category of patients differ significantly (p<0.001) from the mean level in the normal subjects.…”

“…Observations in the present investigation are congruent with these reports. Although there are record on relationship of CIC levels to the stages of malignancies (15) no detailed study correlating CIC levels with histological grades has been reported so far. We had obtained significant correlation between CIC levels and histopathological grades of oral cancer.…”

High-Throughput Screening for Native Autoantigen–Autoantibody Complexes Using Antibody Microarrays

“…Most of these assays have been developed for bacterial, viral or allergen antigens. In a few cases, detection of autoantigens as CIC has been proposed to enhance the sensitivity of cancer detection or prognosis monitoring utilizing prostate-specific antigen (PSA), 6 squamous cell carcinoma antigen, 7 carcinoembryonic antigen 8 and CA-125. 9 Thus, autoantigen-antibody complexes have been shown to be useful disease biomarkers, but progress in the discovery of new CICs has been extremely slow.…”