Biochemical Studies on Some Tumor Markers

Abstract

The liver is affected by both benign and malignant tumoprs, metastatic malignant tumours of the liver are common in clinical practice and it is important to distinguish hepatocellular carcinoma from metastatic tumours, the differentiation between primary and secondary tumours 'can sometimes be difficult. This study will declare the usefulness of a panel of tumor markers in differential diagnosis of patients detected with hepatic focal lesions. This panel will include: Alfa fetoprotein (AFP), Cancer Antigen (CA19.9) and Carcino Embryonic antigen (CEA). This study include 22 healthy individual, 27 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (Group I), 20 patients with secondary liver metastasis from pancreas (Group 2), I 0 patients with secondary liver metastasis from different organ and 18 patients with Hepatocellular carcinoma with HCV (Group 4). All assays carried out in the Oncology Diagnostic Unit, using commercially available MEIA kits on the automated immuno analyzer system IMx (Abbott diagnostic, USA). We showed that, AFP levels were significantly higher in all groups compared with control group with highest among patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma, there is highly statistical difference between the control group and patients with metastatic liver tumours (Gr. 2,3), the best cut off value for AFP, CAJ9.9, CEA is 3.75, 20.65, 13.3. We concluded that AFP and CEA are good markers to differentiate between primary and secondary liver neoplasms respectively. AFP is a good diagnostic marker in primary 'liver tumours, CA19.9 is a good diagnostic marker in astatic liver tumor of Pancreatic origin.