Clinical significance of serum tumor markers in patients with lung cancer

Abstract

Objective To investigate the serum tumor markers level of carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA) ,cytokeratin fragment antigen21-1 (CYFRA21-1),neuron specific enolase (NSE) in patients with lung cancer, and the change after chemotherapy on them. Methods Radioimmunoassay was applied to detect the levels of CEA, CYFRA21-1 ,NSE in 45 patients with advanced NSCLC before and after chemotherapy,and the tumor markers were also detected in 20 patients with SCLC and 20 patients with benign lung diseases of control groups. Results The levels of CEA, CYFRA21-1, NSE in lung cancer group before chemotherapy were much higher than benign group, but there was no difference of CYFRA21-1 between the SCLC group and benign group. The same result of NSE was found between NSCLC and benign group(P ＞0. 05). The value of NSE was lower in the patients with SCLC after chemotherapy than before(P ＜0. 01 ). The level of CYFRA21-1 was lower in squamous carcinoma than before( P ＜0. 01 ). But in the adenocarcinoma group only NSE's level was lower after chemotherapy( P ＞0. 05) ,there were no differences in CEA and CYFRA21-1 ( P ＞ 0. 05 ). Conclusion The levels of the three tumor markers rise obviously in advanced NSCLC and decrease after chemotherapy. The differences were significant with NSE in SCLC and CYFRA21-1 in squamous cell carcinoma and CEA in adenocarcinoma. The levels of serum CEA,CYFRA21-1 and NSE could be a tumor marker in progressive lung cancer. And the decrease of the levels could be used to evaluate the chemotherapeutic response respectively in different pathologic types of lung cancer. Key words: Lung neoplasms ; Tumor markers, biological