Clinicopathological characteristics of alpha fetal protein-positive and carcinoembryonic antigen-positive gastric cancer

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the clinicopathological characteristics of alpha fetal protein (AFP)-positive gastric cancer and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA)-positive gastric cancer,and combined effect of AFP and CEA on clinicopathological characteristics of gastric cancer.Methods 860 patients with gastric cancer in total were reviewed and the relationship between serum AFP and CEA with clinicopathological factors was analyzed.Results There was poorer differentiation (poor differentiation 92.3％ vs.69.5％),more advanced clinical stage (Ⅲ + Ⅳ stage 88.5％ vs.59.9％),more marked lymphatic (80.8％ vs.59.1％) and nerve invasion (46.2％ vs.27.2％) in AFP-positive gastric cancer patients than in the negative group (P ＜ 0.05).Compared with CEA-negative gastric cancer patients,the CEApositive patients with poorer differentiation (poor differentiation 78.5％ vs.70.4％),deeper depth of invasion (T4,84.1％ vs.59.4％),more advanced clinical stage (m + Ⅳ stage 78.5％ vs.55.0％),more marked lymphatic (75.2％ vs.54.5％) and vascular invasion (34.1％ vs.21.0％) (P ＜ 0.05).The result of combined analysis showed that there was significant difference among AFP (+)-CEA (+),AFP (+)-CEA (-),AFP (-)-CEA (+),and AFP (-)-CEA (-) (P＜0.05).Conclusion The clinicopathological features of AFP-positive or CEA-positive gastric cancer patients were quite different from the negative group. Key words: Alpha fetal protein; Carcinoembryonic antigen ; Gastric cancer