Serum levels of tumor markers and their clinical significance in epithelial ovarian cancer.

OBJECTIVES

Tumor markers have been widely used clinically. Detection of serum CA125 is one of the commonly used clinical methods for early screening and early diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer, but it is difficult to diagnose epithelial ovarian cancer with a single specific tumor marker. In this study, the combinatorial tumor marker detection method was used to compare the value of each tumor marker alone and different combinations in the diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer.

METHODS

The clinical data of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (=65) and ovarian benign disease (=29) were collected. Multiple tumor marker protein chip was used to detect cancer antigen 125 (CA125), carbohydrate antigen 242 (CA242), alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), beta-human chorionic gonadotropin (β-HCG), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), cancer antigen 199 (CA199), neuron-specific enolase (NSE), Ferritin, cancer antigen 153 (CA153), and human growth hormone (HGH) serum levels, and to compare the differences between the benign and malignant ovarian tumors. The correlation between tumor markers and clinicopathologic features for ovarian epithelial carcinoma was analyzed by χ test. Spearman rank analysis showed the correlation between CA125 expression level and other tumor markers in epithelial ovarian cancer and the correlation between age and the above 10 tumor markers. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, Youden index, and diagnostic efficiency were used to evaluate the diagnostic value of single tumor marker and the combination of tumor markers.

RESULTS

The levels of β-HCG, NSE, CA153, and CA125 in the epithelial ovarian cancer group were higher than those in the ovarian benign disease group. The level of NSE in the serum of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer was related to the clinical stage of patients. In addition, the levels of CA242, β-HCG, CEA, NSE, Ferritin, CA153 in the serum of patients with epithelial ovarian cancer were positively correlated with CA125 (=0.497, <0.001; =0.612, <0.001; =0.358, =0.003; =0.680, <0.001; =0.322, =0.009; =0.609, <0.001, respectively), and the levels of β-HCG, Ferritin, CA153 were positively correlated with the patient's age (=0.256, =0.040; =0.325, =0.008; =0.249, =0.046, respectively). In the diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer, the sensitivity, Youden index, and diagnostic efficiency of CA125 detection alone were higher than the results of the other 9 separate detections. When CA153, CA199, CA242, Ferritin, and CEA were combined with CA125, the sensitivity of the combined detection of different combinations was higher than that of CA125 alone. The combined detection sensitivities of CA125+CEA and CA125+Ferritin+CEA were 89.2% and 90.8%, respectively, and the diagnostic efficiencies were both 84.1%, which were higher than those of other combinations. The Youden index of CA125+CEA joint detection was 0.616, which was higher than those of other combinations.

CONCLUSIONS

CA125 has a high diagnostic value in the diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancer. The detection of combined tumor markers in serum has higher sensitivity and specificity in epithelial ovarian cancer.