CA19-9 Usefullness

• CA 19-9: Biochemical and Clinical Aspects. Scarà S, et al. Adv Exp Med Biol. 2015. Show full citation Abstract CA19-9 (carbohydrate antigen 19-9, also called cancer antigen 19-9 or sialylated Lewis a antigen) is the most commonly used and best validated serum tumor marker for pancreatic cancer diagnosis in symptomatic patients and for monitoring therapy in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Normally synthesized by normal human pancreatic and biliary ductal cells and by gastric, colon, endometrial and salivary epithelia, CA 19-9 is present in small amounts in serum, and can be over expressed in several benign gastrointestinal disorders. Importantly, it exhibits a dramatic increase in its plasmatic levels during neoplastic disease. However, several critical aspects for its clinical use, such as false negative results in subjects with Lewis (a-b-) genotype and false positive elevation, occasional and transient, in patients with benign diseases, together with its poor positive predictive value (72.3 %), do not make it a good cancer-specific marker and renders it impotent as a screening tool. In the last years a large number of putative biomarkers for pancreatic cancer have been proposed, most of which is lacking of large scale validation. In addition, none of these has showed to possess the requisite sensitivity/specificity to be introduced in clinical use. Therefore, although with important limitations we well-know, CA 19-9 continues being the only pancreatic cancer marker actually in clinical use. PMID 26530370 [PubMed - in process] Full text Full text at journal site Similar articles Role of tumour markers, cytogenetics. Review article Lamerz R, et al. Ann Oncol. 1999. The clinical utility of serum CA 19-9 in the diagnosis, prognosis and management of pancreatic adenocarcinoma: An evidence based appraisal. Ballehaninna UK, et al. J Gastrointest Oncol. 2012. Serum CA 19-9 as a Biomarker for Pancreatic Cancer-A Comprehensive Review. Ballehaninna UK, et al. Indian J Surg Oncol. 2011. Elevated serum levels of Dupan-2 in pancreatic cancer patients negative for Lewis blood group phenotype. Kawa S, et al. Br J Cancer. 1991. CA 50: a tumor marker for gastrointestinal malignancies. Review article Bunworasate U, et al. J Med Assoc Thai. 1995. See all