Comparison of CYFRA 21-1, TPA and TPS in lung cancer, urinary bladder cancer and benign diseases.

Recently CYFRA 21-1, a new tumor marker measuring a fragment of cytokeratin 19, was introduced and proved to be suitable for therapy monitoring and follow-up of non-small cell lung carcinomas (NSCLC), in particular squamous cell carcinomas. Besides CYFRA 21-1 there are two other tumor markers, tissue polypeptide antigen (TPA) and tissue polypeptide-specific antigen (TPS), which also measure various cytokeratins in serum. In a retrospective study we investigated the clinical significance of these three cytokeratin markers in lung cancer and in carcinoma of the urinary bladder. For this purpose we investigated the sera of 50 healthy persons, 273 patients with various benign diseases, 218 patients with histologically proven lung cancer and 88 patients with carcinoma of the urinary bladder. In a first step the specificity was established for the different reference groups and the cutoff values were fixed at a specificity of 95%. In lung cancer the single and combined sensitivities were calculated versus benign lung diseases (n = 58) as reference group. With single determinations CYFRA 21-1 proved to have the highest sensitivity in lung cancer in general (61%), in non-small cell lung carcinomas (64%), in squamous cell carcinomas (79%), in adenocarcinomas (54%) and in large cell carcinomas (65%). In small cell lung carcinomas (SCLC) NSE was confirmed to be the marker of choice (55%). With combined determinations a clear increase in sensitivity could only be reached in large cell carcinomas (CYFRA 21-1 + TPA: 77%) and in small cell carcinomas (CYFRA 21-1 + NSE: 62%).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)