The prevalence of variant alkaline phosphatase in hepatocellular carcinoma in Southern African blacks

✍ Scribed by Stanley Bukofzer; Michael C. Kew; Pamela Rowe

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 559 KB
• Volume: 62
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-0142(19880901)62:5<978::aid-cncr2820620522>3.0.co;2-6

✦ Synopsis

The prevalence of variant alkaline phosphatase in the serum of 335 southern African blacks with hepatocellular carcinoma was determined using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The isoenzyme was detected in 2% (seven of 335) of the patients: it could not be found in the serum of 300 matched, healthy individuals or in 56 patients with various benign hepatic diseases. Variant alkaline phosphatase is thus of little use as a diagnostic marker of hepatocellular carcinoma in southern African blacks. The reported prevalence of this isoenzyme in hepatocellular carcinoma ranges between 3% and 31 %. Higher frequencies usually are recorded in populations with a low incidence of the tumor, and the lowest frequencies have been found in Chinese patients. Our finding of variant alkaline phosphatase in only 2% of another high incidence population fits this trend. Patients with tumors that secreted the variant isoenzyme had a significantly higher serum total alkaline phosphatase activity than those with tumors lacking this property.

Cancer 62:978-981, 1988.

ARIANT ALKALINE phosphatase (VALP) is a tumor-associated isoenzyme of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), ,which is detected in the serum of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) with a prevalence