Serum levels of six tumor markers in patients with benign and malignant gynecological disease

Abstract

We studied the pretreatment serum levels of 6 tumor markers in gynecological patients with and without malignant disease. The tumor markers were carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA), ferritin, Schwangerschaftsprotein 1 (SP1), Schwangerschaftsprotein 3 (SP3) and cancer antigen 125 (CA125). The results were as follows: (1) Serum CA125 and TPA levels were raised in 81% and 57% of patients with ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma; CEA and SP3, in 52% and 43% respectively of patients with ovarian mucinous cystadenocarcinoma; CA125, TPA and SP3, in 76%, 48% and 48% respectively of patients with other ovarian malignancies; and TPA and SP3, in 56% and 40% respectively of patients with endometrial carcinoma. (2) Serum levels of TPA, ferritin and CA125 were more often raised with advancing stages of malignant disease. (3) Serum TPA levels were elevated in 55% of patients with stage I endometrial carcinoma, and serum SP3 levels were elevated in 35% of patients with a stage I malignant ovarian neoplasm and in 45% of patients with endometrial carcinoma. (4) One of the 6 tumor markers showed a raised level in 84% of patients with gynecologic malignancy as against 56% in those with benign gynecologic diseases.

Prognostic Significance of Tumour Markers in Endometrial Cancer

“…The cutoff values used in those studies were 98-110U/ml, which includes our cutoff (2SD above the mean of our normal subjects) [2,4,8], The incidence of elevated TPA ranged from 35 to 56% [2,4,8] and was higher than that found in our study. The incidence of elevated TPA in patients with benign gynaecological dis eases was 6% [1,8], and it was comparable to a similar group in our study.…”

“…The markers studied included cancer an tigen (CA) 125, CA15.3, CA19.9, carcinoem bryonic antigen (CEA) and tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA). All of these markers have been reported in the literature to be raised in endo metrial cancer [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

Cytokeratin Fragment 21-1 in Gynecologic Malignancy: Comparison with Cancer Antigen 125 and Squamous Cell Carcinoma-Related Antigen

“…The small magnitude of serum CYFRA 21-1 elevation may also reduce its value as a marker for mon itoring patients on chemotherapy. Like SCC, the range of serum CYFRA 21-1 levels was rather small in patients with gynecologic ma lignancies [5,6,14], in contrast to CA 125 which occasionally reaches a level of 103 U/ml in advanced ovarian cancer [15]. However, the high specificity and sensitivity of CYFRA 21-1 for ovarian cancer led to a high diagnos tic accuracy (61.3%) like that of CA 125 (53.4%), as demonstrated by the ROC curves in figure 1, and in table 5.…”