Detection of IgM and IgG complexes provides new insight into immune regulation of patients with malignancies: A randomized controlled trial

Ig/Ig two-component-determined circulating immune complex (TCIC) may reveal alteration in immune regulation in patients. In the current study, IgM and IgG–TCIC was investigated in sera of patients suffering from esophagus, intestine, lung, nasopharyngeal, ovarian, breast, uterine and thyroid cancers, and hepatocellular carcinoma, Hodgkins lymphoma, non-Hodgkins lymphoma. This investigation was performed by detection of IgM/IgG–TCIC and IgG/IgM–TCIC with the use of ELISA by the reciprocal use of coating and detecting antibodies. The current study was carried out in 979 patients with these cancers and 401 healthy controls. We found that down-regulated IgM/IgG–TCIC was a common feature in these patients, whereas levels of IgG/IgM–TCIC showed significantly higher, lower or no difference with respect to the control. In summary, our results suggest that IgM and IgG–TCIC may play an important role in immune regulation during the course of malignancies and may be a hallmark for cancer pathogenesis. Decreased IgM/IgG–TCIC, accompanied by diverse IgG/IgM–TCIC, forms a peculiar trait in malignancies. Our findings thus provide new insights into immune regulation in patients with malignancies.