Detection of disseminated tumor cells in the peripheral blood of patients with laryngeal or laryngopharyngeal carcinomas

OBJECTIVE To investigate the diagnostic and prognostic value of molecular biological detection of DTC in peripheral blood. METHODS 32 cases of laryngeal or laryngopharyngeal carcinoma were investigated. DTC in peripheral blood was detected by nested reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction,using CK19mRNA as the marker. RESULTS In the RT-PCR study,15 of 32 cases (46.9 %) showed a positive result. Ten of the 25 cases (40 %) of laryngeal carcinoma were positive. Fix of the remaining 7 cases (71.4 %) of laryngopharyngeal carcinoma were positive. All controls were negative. Of the 20 cases without lymph node metastasis,6 were positive; of the 12 cases with lymph node metastasis,9 were positive. The positive rate of the group with lymph node metastasis was higher than that of the group without lymph node involvement(P0.05). Grouping according to the RT-PCR result showed that the disease-free survival time of the positive group(20.29±5.16 months) was significantly shorter than that of the negative group(37.13±3.23 months,P0.05,with Log-rank test),and that the recurrence rate of positive group (66.7 %) was higher than that of the negative group (18.8 %,P0.05). Kaplan- Meirer survival analysis of 28 cases showed that the survival rate of positive group was declining (P0.01,with Log-rank test). CONCLUSION This study indicated that CK19mRNA is a potential marker for laryngeal and laryngopharyngeal carcinoma. DTC detection in peripheral blood by our meticulously designed RT-PCRsystem may be able to find the early metastasis event. According to our follow-up result,it may also indicate the carcinoma recurrence and distant metastasis rate.