Characterization of circulating blood dendritic cell subsets DCI23+ (lymphoid) and DCIIC+ (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.