Characterization of circulating blood dendritic cell subsets DC123+ (lymphoid) and DC11C+ (myeloid) in prostate adenocarcinoma patients

PURPOSE. We verified whether prostate adenocarcinoma produces specific modifications in DC subsets count. METHODS. Twenty-one untreated prostate adenocarcinomas were divided on the basis of clinical stage in localized and metastatic disease. As control we used a population of 18 healthy male subjects. For DCs enumeration, peripheral blood (PB) samples were obtained in all cases. A single-platform flow cytometric assay based on Tru-COUNT was used for the enumeration of the two DCs subsets, myeloid (mDCs) and plasmacytoid (pDCs). RESULTS. We showed a statistically significant reduction in pDCs count in prostate cancer population when compared to healthy controls (P = 0.002). Comparing each clinical stage with healthy controls, significant differences were found between controls and the metastatic group in both pDCs and mDCs (P = 0.005 and P = 0.023 respectively) but not between controls and the localized group (P = 0.055 and P = 0.829 respectively). CONCLUSIONS. We showed that DCs count in PB is significantly affected by prostate adenocarcinoma progression in a metastatic disease. © 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.