Evaluation of the relationships of prealbumin components in sera of patients with cancer.

Serum proteins of cancer and control sera have been evaluated by the conventional Mancini method as well as by scanning densitometry measurements of components after separation by gradient PAGE. We established than in sera of cancer patients, prealbumin levels decrease and alpha 1-acid glycoprotein levels increase significantly. However, the Mancini method was not as sensitive as PAGE for quantitative evaluation of differences among sera of healthy adults, smokers, and patients with benign disease. We find that a more sensitive measure is the ratio between the two components (alpha 1-acid glycoprotein and prealbumin) and suggest that these values possibly may be useful as a CSI. In this study, the average CSI for healthy adults is 0.79, for heavy smokers, 1.24; for benign diseases, 1.67; and patients with various forms of cancer as follows: early lung, 4.17; late lung, 8.78; bladder, 8.92; colon, 13.77; breast, 2.43; and melanoma, 9.22.