Department of Biomedical, Surgical and Oral Science, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
Int J Biol Markers. 2012 Dec 27;27(4):e395-9. doi: 10.5301/JBM.2012.9579.
Bone metastases are a frequent complication of several types of cancers. Since bone metastases are difficult to diagnose with the current available approaches, there is a demand for new methods for assessing bone response. In this context, biochemical markers of bone remodeling may provide useful information on bone turnover that, in turn, may reflect disease activity in bone. In this study we tested a panel of bone remodeling markers (distinguishing between bone formation and bone resorption ones) in different groups of cancer patients, so as to evaluate the potential clinical role of the examined bone remodeling markers in the early diagnosis of metastases formation and progression. Among the bone resorption markers, tartrate resistant acid phosphatase 5b (TRAP5b) resulted the most specific for the metastatic tumor stage. Both the bone formation markers we analyzed displayed a direct correlation (positive for bone-specific alkaline phosphatase [BAP] and negative for osteocalcin [OC]) with tumor disease progression, ranging from healthy controls to primary tumor and, ultimately, to the metastatic stage. Taken together our results suggest that these markers can be valuable tools to be used, in parallel with traditional methods of metastases diagnosis, in order to monitor more in detail the pathological effect of metastases progression in bone tissue.
骨转移是多种癌症的常见并发症。由于目前可用的方法难以诊断骨转移，因此需要新的方法来评估骨反应。在这种情况下，骨重建的生化标志物可能提供有关骨转换的有用信息，而骨转换反过来又可能反映骨中的疾病活动。在这项研究中，我们测试了一组不同癌症患者的骨重建标志物（区分骨形成和骨吸收标志物），以评估所检查的骨重建标志物在早期诊断转移形成和进展中的潜在临床作用。在骨吸收标志物中，抗酒石酸酸性磷酸酶 5b（TRAP5b）对转移性肿瘤阶段最具特异性。我们分析的两种骨形成标志物均与肿瘤疾病进展呈直接相关（骨碱性磷酸酶[BAP]呈阳性，骨钙素[OC]呈阴性），范围从健康对照组到原发性肿瘤，最终到转移阶段。总之，我们的研究结果表明，这些标志物可以与传统的转移诊断方法一起作为有价值的工具，以便更详细地监测骨组织中转移进展的病理效应。
