Abstract
The purpose of the study was to determine the activity of natural killer (NK) cells in children with malignant tumors and the effect of interleukin-2 (IL-2) in enhancing NK-cell activity of these patients in vitro. The NK-cell activity in mononuclear cells of peripheral blood was measured by the 125 IUdR release assay. The mean level of NK-cell activity in children with cancer (16.52%) was significantly lower than that for normal controls (29.75%) and no significant difference of NK-cell activity was found between children with different cancers. After mononuclear cells were incubated with recombinant IL-2 (rIL-2), NK cells from 96% (22/23) of the samples showed augmented cytotoxicity. The levels of NK-cell activity of patients, either prior to therapy or with treatment (operation or chemotherapy), were very low (1.36%–30.69%; 6.17%–33.64%, respectively) before rIL-2 stimulation and significantly increased (15.41%–65.80%; 23.85%–49.36%, respectively) after stimulation, suggesting a potential therapeutic role for rIL-2 in the treatment of malignant solid tumors of childhood and providing a rationale for the clinical use of rIL-2.
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