3-hydroxyproline and Neoplasms

to observe the influence of aging on urinary secretion of 3-hydroxyproline (3-Hyp) in normal subjects and in cancer patients and study the effects of aging on the accuracy of urinary 3-Hyp as a general-purpose cancer screening test.. We reanalyzed, from the aspect of gerontology, the amounts of 3-Hyp in the urine samples of the 211 healthy persons and 94 patients with cancer reported earlier. The two groups were divided in 3 age subgroups: adult, 30 to 44 years, middle-aged, 45 to 64 years, and aged, 65 years and older. The cancer stage was separated into 3 categories: stage 1, the early stage without any invasion, stage 2, locally invasive with no distant metastasis, and stage 3, advanced cancer. The correlation of age and urinary 3-Hyp was analyzed in normal subjects and cancer patients. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated for different cutoff points in the diverse groups to construct the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.. We observed that aging decreases the urinary secretion of 3-Hyp in normal subjects, with a correlation coefficient of -0.250 (p < 0.001). The mean levels of urinary 3-Hyp in patients with cancer were significantly higher than in the normal subjects, p = 0.005. The correlation coefficient of urinary 3-Hyp and age was not significant (0.100) in cancer patients. The cutoff points of 0.800 mg/g creatinine of urinary 3-Hyp for persons under 65 years of age and 0.600 mg/g creatinine for persons 65 years or older were the best thresholds for cancer screening. In the ROC analyses, we observed that 3-Hyp has higher accuracy for cancer screening in the aged group for all stages together and in the aged and middle-aged for early stages of cancer.. The urinary 3-Hyp test was more effective for cancer screening in old persons (65 years or older), where cancer is more frequent and more difficult to discover. The authors stress the necessity and importance of verifying the effectiveness of urinary 3-Hyp for general cancer screening in a larger population and in a community set.

Topics: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Aging; Biomarkers, Tumor; Female; Humans; Hydroxyproline; Male; Mass Screening; Middle Aged; Neoplasms; ROC Curve; Sensitivity and Specificity

A method for determining the endogenous urinary excretion levels of both 3-hydroxyproline and 4-hydroxyproline that may be useful for cancer screening of the general population and at the workplace is evaluated in this report. The excretion levels of 3-hydroxyproline and 4-hydroxproline were estimated in 97 patients with cancer and in 99 patients with various nonmalignant diseases and were compared with those of 211 healthy persons. Measurable 3-hydroxyproline peaks (by amino acid autoanalyzer) were absent from 93 samples from 211 healthy persons (44%), 50 of 99 patients with nonmalignant disease (50%), and 10 of 96 patients with cancer (10%). The levels of both 3-hydroxyproline and 4-hydroxyproline in cancer patients were significantly higher than those in healthy persons (p < 0.001 and p < 0.01, respectively) and those in patients with nonmalignant diseases (p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively). Cancer patients were classified into three groups according to grade of cancer growth and invasion. The sensitivity of 3-hydroxyproline was 44% and higher than that of 4-hydroxyproline for the detection of stage II cancers (no distant metastasis); the sensitivities of both hydroxyprolines for the detection of stage I (very early cancer) were low. The specificity of these assays for healthy persons and patients with nonmalignant disease was 96% and 92% for 3-hydroxyproline, and 97% and 79% for 4-hydroxyproline, respectively. Urinary 3-hydroxyproline level should be further investigated as a cancer screening method for healthy persons in the community or the workplace, but appears unlikely to detect many cancers in the earliest stages.

Topics: Adult; Aged; Biomarkers, Tumor; Creatinine; Female; Humans; Hydroxyproline; Male; Middle Aged; Neoplasms; Sensitivity and Specificity