Clinical follow-up and the cell-mediated cytotoxicity against HeLa cells in patients with invasive or preinvasive cervical cancer.

18% of patients with clinical stage Ib-IIa invasive cervical carcinoma, in contrast to 57% of patients with a more advanced carcinoma at the time of treatment, were positive in microcytotoxicity tests with peripheral blood lymphoid cells against HeLa cells in repeated tests 4--22 months after treatment. About half of the patients with cytotoxic lymphoid cells before treatment had lost this capacity at follow-up: the same was true of patients with severe dysplasia or carcinoma in situ. Eight out of 33 patients with mild epithelial dysplasia were cytotoxic at the start of the study. Five (62%) of the cytotoxic donors had signs of persisting epithelial atypia or of progressive disease, whereas only 7 (28%) of the 25 non-reactive patients had cytological abnormalities and in none had the disease progressed. Persisting cytoxicity at follow-up may thus be related to the continuing presence of the disease in these patients.