Comparison of nuclear matrix protein 22 and bladder tumor antigen in urine of patients with bladder cancer.

Recently, two new tumor markers for bladder cancer have been introduced: NMP22 test and BTA TRAK assay. This study was designed to evaluate the urinary values of these two proteins using quantitative enzyme immunoassays in well microplates. Urine samples from 47 healthy subjects, 26 with benign genitourinary disorders and 109 patients with a histological diagnosis of bladder cancer were collected. The specificity, the positive predictive value, the negative predictive value and the efficiency were established for NMP 22 and BTA, and the cut off values were fixed at a specificity of 95% in the benign disease group (12 U/ml and 23 U/ml respectively). We observed a very high concordance between the two urinary tumor markers (73%), although the overall sensitivity of BTA in bladder cancer patients seems to be better than that of NMP22 (62% vs 54% respectively), especially in the superficial disease group (36% for BTA and 14% for NMP22).