Diagnostic value of ganglioside patterns in plasma of human diseases.

A method that could be facilitated for the quantitation and qualitation of gangliosides in human plasma was developed and applied in the present study for characterization of ganglioside patterns in plasmas of patients with neoplastic diseases including gastric cancer, adult T-cell leukemia (ATL), and acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). As a retrovirus-infected disease with different clinical entity, human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I-associated myelopathy (HAM) was also subjected to this study. The results were compared with the patterns obtained from normal control plasmas. The analytical data revealed that GM3 increased in gastric cancer, GT1b decreased in HAM and ATL, and GD3, GM1 and GM3 decreased in ALL. There were close correlations between various human diseases and the presence of gangliosides with their specific patterns. Furthermore, gangliosides purified from plasma of patients with HAM significantly inhibited the expression of CD4 antigen on human T lymphocyte membrane. Therefore, analytical studies of plasma gangliosides could provide diagnostic and therapeutic values in retroviral infections.