Behaviour of lymphocytes from cancer patients and normal individuals cultured with phytohaemagglutinin.

Blood lymphocytes from cancer patients with solid tumours without any previous immunosuppressive treatment and from normal individuals, were cultured in vitro with a wide range of phytohaemagglutinin (PHA). Sixty two per cent of all the cancer patients studied show a minimal of no response to PHA in comparison with the normal population. The rest (38%), show a quantitative identical response than normals. However, the maximal response in these patients occur in the high PHA doses, while the normal individuals show their maximal activity with low PHA doses. The low or no PHA response showed by the 62% of patients, may indicate they have impaired cellular immunity. The high response showed by the other 38%, may indicate that the patients of this group have high cellular immunity capacity. This immunity, however, higher PHA doses are required to reach the maximal response compared with the seems to be different from that of normal individuals, since higher PHA doses are required in cancer patients to reach maximal response. These results also suggest that a large range of PHA doses may be important to detect the degree of cellular immunity in cancer patients compared with the normal population. One or two random PHA doses, may not show a distinction.