Du Zi-Yan, Shi Min-Hua, Ji Cheng-Hong, Yu Yong
Department of Respiratory Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China E-mail :
Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2015;16(4):1421-5. doi: 10.7314/apjcp.2015.16.4.1421.
Pleiotrophin (PTN), an angiogenic factor, is associated with various types of cancer, including lung cancer. Our aim was to investigate the possibility of using serum PTN as an early indicator regarding disease diagnosis, classification and prognosis, for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Significant differences among PTN levels in patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC, n=40), NSCLC (n=136), and control subjects with benign pulmonary lesions (n=21), as well as patients with different pathological subtypes of NSCLC were observed.
A serum level of PTN of 300.1 ng/ml, was determined as the cutoff value differentiating lung cancer patients and controls, with a sensitivity and specificity of 78.4% and 66.7%, respectively. Negative correlations between serum PTN level and pathological differentiation level, stage, and survival time were observed in our cohort of patients with NSCLC. In addition, specific elevation of PTN levels in pulmonary tissue in and around NSCLC lesions in comparison to normal pulmonary tissue obtained from the same subjects was also observed (n=2).
This study suggests that the serum PTN level of patients with NSCLC could be an early indicator for diagnosis and prognosis. This conclusion should be further assessed in randomized clinical trials.
多效生长因子（PTN）是一种血管生成因子，与包括肺癌在内的多种癌症相关。我们的目的是研究血清PTN作为非小细胞肺癌（NSCLC）患者疾病诊断、分类和预后的早期指标的可能性。
观察了小细胞肺癌（SCLC，n = 40）、NSCLC（n = 136）患者以及良性肺部病变对照受试者（n = 21）之间PTN水平的显著差异，以及NSCLC不同病理亚型患者之间的差异。
血清PTN水平为300.1 ng/ml被确定为区分肺癌患者和对照的临界值，敏感性和特异性分别为78.4%和66.7%。在我们的NSCLC患者队列中，观察到血清PTN水平与病理分化程度、分期和生存时间呈负相关。此外，与同一受试者的正常肺组织相比，还观察到NSCLC病变及其周围肺组织中PTN水平的特异性升高（n = 2）。
本研究表明，NSCLC患者的血清PTN水平可能是诊断和预后的早期指标。这一结论应在随机临床试验中进一步评估。
