Evaluation of diagnosing disseminated tumor cells by nested RT-PCR in peripheral blood and bone marrow from patients with lung cancer

Objective To explore the clinical significance of molecular diagnosis of disseminated tumor cells (DTC) in peripheral blood and bone marrow from non-small cell lung cancer patients. Methods The MUC1 mRNA expression was detected in peripheral blood and bone marrow from 31 lung cancer patients by nested RT-PCR, with samples of 10 benign pulmonary lesion patients and 8 healthy adults as control. Results The positive rate of MUC1 mRNA were 32.3%(10/31) and 22.6%(7/31) in peripheral blood and bone marrow from lung cancer patients, respectively. Highly positive correlation existed between the two groups (P0.05). The DTC in peripheral blood and bone marrow were closely related to the pathological classification, cell differentiation of the cancer and P-TNM stage of the disease (P0.05). No MUC1 mRNA expression was found in the samples from patients with benign pulmonary lesion or healthy adult volunteers. The mean survival time of the 10 patients with DTC positive was 12 months, but the mean survival time of the 21 patients with DTC negative was 31 months (P0.01). Conclusion The peripheral blood and bone marrow from patients with lung cancer possesses DTC that can not be detected by common methods. MUC1 mRNA might be a valuable marker to detect DTC in lung cancer patients. It can also provide important clinical information for the evaluation of prognosis and in the selection of appropriate treatment strategies.