Significance of Serum Ferritin Concentrations in Lung Cancer and it’s Relation with Cellular Immunity

Abstract

Numerous reports have dealt with a search for substances which could be used either for early detection or to evaluate the course of therapy in lung cancer. The substances that were described to date could be categorised as either tumor associated antigens or biochemical tumor markers ; which were normal substances present in elevated levels in the serum of the tumor-bearing host. Similarly many different proteins, hormones and enzymes have been described as being potentially valuable tumor markers (Burt et al 1978). Recently, serum ferritin was being considered to be a reliable index in tumors and hematologic malignancies (Jones et al 1986). It was also shown that serum ferritin had an important role in the pathogenesis of abnormal immune function in Hodgkin disease and other malignancies (Hancock et al 1979, Matzner et al 1979). Especially in vitro studies exhibited a disturbance in T-lymphocyte function caused by ferritin (Peter et al 1984).