The sensitivity and specifity of DR-70 immunoassay as a tumor marker for non-small cell lung cancer.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Lung cancer is the most important causes of the cancer related mortality. Patients with lung cancer are usually diagnosed at advanced or locally advanced stage, for this reason early diagnosis of lung cancer is very important. For early detection of lung cancer some methods are emphasized such as low-dose computed tomography or tumor biomarkers. In this study we aimed to evaluate DR-70 sensitivity and specificity as a tumor marker in detection of non-small cell lung cancers. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Between May 2013 and April 2014, the serum samples from 88 non lung cancer patients, 86 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disesase were obtained. Blood samples from each participant were analyzed for DR-70 level. RESULT: Totally 174 patients were enrolled to the study (152 male, 22 female). Histopathologically 47(53.4%) patients were diagnosed with squamous cell lung cancer, 34 (38.6%) with adenocarcinoma, and 7 (8%) with non-small cell lung cancer. The mean serum DR-70 levels in lung cancer patients (2.43 ± 1.82 µg/mL) was significantly higher compared to the 86 non-cancerous subjects (1.15 ± 0.70 µg/mL) (p< 0.01). DR-70 exhibited clinical sensitivity and specificity of 54.5 and 83.7%, respectively, at an optimal cut off at 1.98 µg/mL. It could be said that the risk of the presence of the disease is 6.171 times higher in the cases where DR-70 level is 1.98 µg/mL and higher. CONCLUSION: DR-70, a marker used to measure fibrin degradation products, generated by all major cancers, may helps to find high risk lung cancer patients.