PCR detection of circulating tumor cells in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients with distant metastasis: effect of enzyme and sampling.

摘要: Background Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has a high potential to develop distant metastasis after radiotherapy. Cytokeratin 19 (CK-19) mRNA been frequently used as marker in the detection of circulating tumor cells epithelial origin, but rarely investigated NPC. This study was performed evaluate effect blood sampling and different Taq DNA polymerase on results nested reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay. Methods Peripheral samples from total 37 NPC patients with well-documented (M1) were collected before treatment. Eighteen had more than one sampling. Five polymerases test 17 patients. Peripheral nonmetastatic (M0) tested by same RT-PCR system using multiple impact multienzyme assay prediction subsequent metastasis. Results Among M1 patients, accumulative positive rates CK-19 22.2%, 44.4%, 70.6%, 75.0%, 80.0% when one, two, three, four, or five taken, respectively. The increased numbers enzymes increased—from 35.5% enzyme 82.4% enzymes. Six M0 median follow-up time 20 months. sensitivity for four-enzyme (5 6 = 83.3%) is better that one-enzyme (2 33.3%). Conclusions Our data demonstrate significantly enhances molecular diagnosis metastasis. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Head Neck 24: 591–596,