Prognosis of intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guerin therapy for superficial bladder cancer by immunological urinary measurements: statistically weighted syndrome analysis

PURPOSE: The goal of this research was to discover new biological ind icators in urine which could be used for short-term prognosis of loca l Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) therapy outcome in patients with sup erficial bladder cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We measured and statis tically evaluated soluble immunological molecules in urine from bladd er cancer patients (n = 34) receiving BCG intravesically. Urine was c ollected following each of 6 weekly treatments, processed and assayed . The data base included measurements of interleukin-1 (IL-2, IL-4, I L-6, IL-10, IL-12, soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1 ), tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF alpha), soluble CD14 (sCD14), in terferon-gamma (IFN gamma), GM-CSF, volume of urine and its pH. The c linical response was evaluated by urine histology and random quadrant biopsy 3 months after the start of therapy. Patients were divided in to 2 groups, with good and poor therapeutic effect. The initial compl ete response rate was 62% (21/34). The data base was analyzed using t raditional multivariate statistical methods and a pattern recognition method which deals with combinatorial-statistical analysis (statisti cally weighted syndromes (SWS) method) of the gradated features. The SWS method is capable of identifying robust patterns in small "fuzzy" sets with high dimensional objects and some missing values. RESULTS: Only one parameter gave significant differences at p