Assessment of urinary β-core fragment of human chorionic gonadotropin as a new tumor marker of lung cancer

✍ Scribed by Masahiro Yoshimura; Ryuichiro Nishimura; Akihiro Murotani; Yoshifumi Miyamoto; Toshitaro Nakagawa; Kazuo Hasegawa; Tamio Koizumi; Kouzui Shii; Shigeaki Baba; Noriaki Tsubota

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1994
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 710 KB
• Volume: 73
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-0142(19940601)73:11<2745::aid-cncr2820731116>3.0.co;2-v

✦ Synopsis

Background. Some patients with lung cancer have been found to have elevated levels of serum immunoreactive human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)/hCG@ (IR-@), but it is uncertain whether it would be valuable as a tumor marker. Recently, IR-@ has been demonstrated to consist of at least three different molecules, intact hCG, free hCG@, and hCGB-core fragment (8-CF), in body fluids. In this study, the authors qualitatively analyzed IR-@ in the serum and urine of patients with lung cancer and assessed its clinical usefulness as a tumor marker.

Methods. Highly sensitive and specific enzyme immunoassays were established to measure intact hCG, free hCGj3, and 8-CF in the serum and urine of patients with lung cancer.

Results. Of 99 patients with lung cancer, almost half of the patients achieved positive values of IR-8 in the urine, although only 12 had elevated values of IR-@ in the serum. The greater part of the elevated urinary IR-/3 was identified to be @-CF by gel chromatography on Sephadex G-100 (Pharmacia LKB Biotechnology, Tokyo, Japan), leading the authors to assess its usefulness as a tumor marker for lung cancer. Based on the cutoff value (0.2 ng/ mg of creatinine) from healthy subjects, the overall positive rate of urinary @.CF for lung cancer was 48.5% (48 of 99 patients). The incidence of the marker increased with stage of disease, from 35.7% (15 of 42) in Stage I and 35.7% (5 of 14) in Stage I1 to 62.5% (20 of 32) in Stage 111 and 72.7% (8 of 11) in Stage IV. These positive rates exceeded or equaled those of the serum tumor markers, carcinoembryonic antigen, and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC)-related antigen, measured simultaneously in the same patients.