Health Screening
NK Cell Activity Test
To help in the assessment of your health and rate of ageing, it is important to know the function of your immune system.
From a sample of your blood we can give you an estimate of the functional levels of your Natural Killer Cells (NK Cells). NK Cells serve an important role in host defense against viral infections, as well as tumor surveillance.
Because NK cell activity indicates the function of your immune system, this test gives a real insight to your cellular health, and supports the assessment of your risk of disease or cancer.
Test Price = 35,000 THB ($1150 USD)
NK Cell Activity Explained
Know Your Immune Health | Know Your Cancer RISK
From your own blood we will extract your Natural Killer (NK) Cells to test cytotoxicity levels. The ability of NK cells to kill tumour cells is measured by placing your NK cells with target cancer cells in a culture dish. The cells are then incubated together for 4 hours at 37°C with 5% CO2.
Post incubation, 7 amino-actinomycin D and fluorescein isothiocyanate are added to determine the number of cancer cells in apoptosis on flow cytometer. A total of 10,000 events are analysed and the number of events in each region are used to determine NK cell cytotoxic activity (number of successful deaths of cancer cells).
The average reference ranges for healthy patients are:
Male: 43 – 58 %
Female: 35 – 51 %
If you are within the reference range, it indicates your immune cells are in a normal health status and ratio.
If your result is lower than the reference value, it indicates that the effectiveness of your immune cells to respond to cancerous or infected cells is low.
If your result is higher than the reference value, it indicates that your cells are more active. Athletes generally have an increased active state. However, it can also indicate an infectious state or increased risk of developing age-related disease such as Alzheimer’s.
We recommend every patient to perform an Immune Health & Cancer Risk Test (called NK Activity Test or NK Cytotoxicity test). Natural Killer cell cytotoxic activity is vital for the clearance of viral (infected cells), senescent cells and malignantly transformed cells (cancer cells). Our specialist protocols are used to assess NK cell cytotoxic activity against tumour cells, lytic proteins, degranulation and interferon gamma production.
Natural Killer (NK) cells are innate immune cells which lyse infected and malignantly transformed cells (cancer cells) by cytotoxic activity. Cytotoxic NK cells contain high numbers of secretory granules which store and release death inducing proteins such as perforin and granzymes. Perforin facilitates the delivery of serine proteases known as granzymes into the target cell by forming a pore either on the endosome or plasma membrane of the target cell.
The granzymes released activate three distinct pathways of apoptosis in the target cell. In humans, granzyme B (GrzB) and granzyme A (GrzA) are the most potent activators of apoptosis (Cancer/infected cell death). NK cells also initiate target cell apoptosis (cancer/infected cell death) through tumour necrosis factor (TNF) ligands expressed on NK cells to induce apoptosis.