Effects of concurrent chemoradiotherapy on immune function and tumor markers SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 in patients with esophageal carcinoma

摘要

Objective: To investigate the effects of concurrent chemoradiotherapy and radiotherapy alone on immune function and tumor markers SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 in patients with esophageal carcinoma. Method: A total of 84 patients with esophageal cancer treated in our hospital from June 2015 to April 2017 were selected and randomly divided into the observation group and the control group with 42 cases each. The control group received radiotherapy only and irradiated by medical electron linear accelerator, radiotherapy for 6 weeks. The observation group was given radiotherapy and chemotherapy concurrently, 3 weeks for 1 courses, 2 cycles of chemotherapy. The fasting venous blood of patients in two groups were collected in the morning when patients were hospitalized and after chemotherapy, using flow cytometry to detect the immune function indexes of two groups of patients with esophageal cancer before and after treatment, including natural killer cells (NK), T suppressor cells (Ts), T helper cells (Th), Th/Ts and T lymphocytes (T total). The levels of serum SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 were detected by electrochemiluminescence assay. Results: There were no significant differences in the indexes of immune function between the two groups before treatment. Total T, the proportion of Th and Th/Ts in the two groups both increased significantly; the proportion of Ts decreased significantly; the difference was statistically significant. NK was higher than treatment before but not significantly. After treatment, the levels of T total, Th, Th/Ts in the observation group were significantly higher than the control group; the levels of NK and Ts were not significantly different. Before treatment, there was no significant difference in serum SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 between the two groups. After treatment, the serum SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 levels of the two groups were both significantly decreased; the serum levels of SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 in the observation group were significantly lower than the control group. Conclusion: Radiotherapy combined with chemotherapy of cisplatin and paclitaxel can improve the immune function and reduce serum SCC-Ag and CYFRA21-1 levels of esophageal cancer patients. This therapeutic schemes can be beneficial to increase the survival rate of patients with esophageal cancer.