Expression characteristics and diagnostic value of double-negative T cells and T lymphocyte subsets in breast cancer
Objective To investigate the expression of double-negative T(DNT)cells and T lymphocyte subsets in breast cancer and their relationship with clinicopathological features of breast cancer,and the diagnostic value of breast cancer screening combined with tumor marker analysis.Methods A case-control study was used to retrospectively select 82 pa-tients with breast cancer(breast cancer group),88 patients with benign breast tumor(benign breast tumor group)and 81 healthy physical examination subjects(healthy group)from 960th Hospital of the PLA Joint Logistics Support Force from September 30,2021 to April 18,2023.The expression of DNT cells and T lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood of the three groups was analyzed by flow cytometry,and the clinicopathological relationship between DNT cells and their subsets and patients with breast cancer was discussed.The influencing factors of breast cancer occurrence were analyzed by binary logistic regression.The diagnostic efficacy of DNT cell and tumor markers carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA),carbohydrate antigen 125(CA125)and carbohydrate antigen 15-3(CA15-3)alone and in combination in breast cancer was evaluated u-sing receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curves.Results In breast cancer group,CD4+T cell percentage,CD4+/CD8+ratio and DNT cell percentage were 33.74％,1.35 and 7.84％,respectively,higher than 26.75％,1.02 and 3.82％in the healthy group.DNT cell percentage of 7.84％in the breast cancer group was higher than that of 4.34％in the benign tumor group.The percentage of CD4+T cells and the ratio of CD4+/CD8+in the benign tumor group were 34.28％and 1.32,higher than those in the healthy group(26.75％and 1.02),respectively.The differences were statis-tically significant(P＜0.001).The percentage of CD3+T cells and the percentage of CD4+T cells were significantly dif-ferent in the pathological classification of breast cancer(P=0.019 and P=0.002).The percentages of CD3+T cells,CD4+T cells and DNT cells in the metastatic group were lower than those in the group without lymphatic metastasis,and the differences were statistically significant(P=0.009,P=0.047 and P=0.005).Compared with the early stage of breast cancer(stage Ⅰ+Ⅱ),the percentage of CD3+T cells,CD4+T cells and DNT cells in the advanced group(stageⅢ+Ⅳ)were decreased,and the differences were statistically significant(P＜0.001,P=0.003 and P=0.027).The percentage of CD4+T cells in high expression group was lower than that in low expression group,and the difference was statistically significant(P=0.041).There were significant differences in the percentage of CD3+T cells and the percent-age of DNT cells in the molecular classification of breast cancer(P=0.046 and P=0.016).Binary logistic regression a-nalysis suggested that CD4+T cell percentage,DNT cell percentage,CEA,CA125,CA15-3 were the influencing factors for the occurrence of breast cancer.The differences were statistically significant(P=0.002,P＜0.001,P=0.038,P=0.004 and P=0.013).ROC curve showed that the area under the curve of DNT cell percentage,CEA,CA125,CA15-3,CEA+CA125+CA15-3,DNT+CEA+CA125+CA15-3 was 0.810,0.702,0.714,0.727,0.812 and 0.897 in the healthy group and the breast cancer group,respectively.The area under the curve for benign and malignant breast tumors was 0.739,0.684,0.665,0.700,0.774 and 0.838,respectively.Conclusions There are significant differences in pe-ripheral blood T lymphocyte subsets between benign and malignant breast tumors,and DNT cells increased significantly in breast cancer patients.DNT cells and T lymphocyte subsets are statistically significant correlated with clinicopathologic features of breast cancer,and the combined detection of DNT cells and tumor markers CEA,CA125 and CA15-3 can im-prove the diagnostic efficiency of breast cancer.
breast cancerdouble-negative T cellsT lymphocyteflow cytometrydiagnostic index
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