Frequency of Antiphospholipid Antibodies in Iranian Patients with Solid Malignan-cies: A Pilot Study

Antiphospholipid antibodies (aPLs) are a family of immunoglobulins acting against dif-ferent phospholipids or their complexes with plasma proteins. Included in this family are lupus anticoagulant (LA), antibodies to cardiolipin antibodies (aCLA) and to beta2 glycoprotein I (aβ2GP1). Some clinical manifestations associated with aPLs are venous and arterial thromboses, thrombocytopenia, hemolytic anemia, obstetric complications as recurrent spontaneous abortion, and livedo reticularis (1). APLs are reported in patients with hematological malignancies and solid tumors such as β-cell lymphoma, non–Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), renal cell carcinoma, melanoma and lung cancer (2). Previous studies have shown that aPLs increase in cancer patients and this may be a contributing factor to the increased incidence of thromboembolism events like venous thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in these patients which in turn is associated with poor prognosis (3). That is why some suggest that aPLs may be considered as markers for disease activity and progression in certain malignancies because of their effects on mortality and morbidity during the course of cancer (4). On the other hand, some authors suggest increased prevalence of certain cancers in patients with aPLs (5). Other studies showed no relation between aPLs and certain cancers (6). It seems that aPLs are important factors to study in cancer patients. Therefore we stud-ied a group of Iranian patients with different types of malignancies to measure aPL titers and to evaluate possible association with malignancies. 52 patients including 20 males and 32 females with different types of solid malignancies were randomly enrolled from Nemazee Hospital, Southern Iran, during their routine follow up from June 2006 to May 2007. Sera were prepared and stored at -20°C until analysed.