Urinary polyamines as a tumor marker.

We recently established a new simple enzymatic assay method for measuring total urinary polyamines. To evaluate the clinical usefulness of measuring total urinary polyamines as a tumor marker, we have applied this method to the assay of polyamines in the urine of cancer patients. Elevation above 3 SD of the normal mean was found in 116 of the 181 patients with cancer (stomach 49/72 [68.1%], colon 22/32 [68.8%], lung 16/24 [66.7%], blood 15/27 [55.6%], liver 3/14 [21.4%], gallbladder 4/4 [100%], and esophagus 7/8 [87.5%]). Total urinary polyamine levels were determined before and after surgery in 36 patients with gastrointestinal cancer (stomach 22 and colon 14). Urinary polyamine levels fell to within the normal range after successful surgery in 23 of 30 patients who had showed elevated levels of urinary polyamines before surgery. Our data indicate that the determination of total urinary polyamines by our new assay may be useful as a tumor marker.