Monitoring the therapy of lung cancer with alpha-1-acid glycoprotein.

Alpha-1-Acid glycoprotein is an acute-phase serum protein which is found in increased amounts in patients with a variety of cancers. This paper describes the application of discriminant analysis to the comparison of plasma levels of alpha-1-acid glycoprotein in 95 patients with lung cancer and 84 patients without known cancer. Using this technique, alpha-1-acid glycoprotein measurement yielded a sensitivity of 89% and specificity of 84% in the detection of active lung cancer. In addition, a new method for analysis of serial tumor marker data is presented which demonstrates that normalization of alpha-1-acid glycoprotein levels during antineoplastic therapy correlates with a significantly prolonged relapse-free survival in lung cancer patients.