Interestingly, it appears cancer patients harbor higher rates of pre-existent autoantibodies: our pre-treatment combined anti-Tg and anti-TPO rate of 54%, and published rates of NSCLC patient pre-treatment rheumatoid factor and antinuclear antibody rates of 28% and 35%, respectively39, are higher than the general population rates of anti-Tg (11%), anti-TPO (13%), rheumatoid factor (5–25%) and antinuclear antibodies (27%)48–50. Here, TPO is linked to cancer.