Cancer immunotherapy: Some critical comments regarding immunological monitoring

The present paper attempts to identify some of the problems associated with immune monitoring in relation to current clinical experience with levamisole. Since the paper is based upon this experience, it is also restricted to tests of immunity that are available in many laboratories. More sophisticated techniques, recently developed, may prove much more reliable and, therefore, less susceptible to the factors discussed here, than the more common tests. Since levamisole treatment aims at redressing the balance between the cancer and the host's defence capacities, it seems convenient to first discuss the pre-treatment immunological status of the patient, because any deficiencies present at this stage may be helpful in defining levamisole-susceptible individuals. In a second section, the potential impact of levamisole therapy on defence mechanisms will be considered by discussing attempts to "measure" changes induced by the treatment.