calca-protein--human and Stomach-Neoplasms

Despite substantial advances in radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, surgical management remains the standard of care, especially in patients with no evidence of distant metastases and who are fit for surgery. It is traditionally known, however, that patients undergoing surgery for gastrointestinal malignancies suffer from a high rate of infective complications and there is little information on the behavior of C-Reactive Protein (CRP) and procalcitonin (PCT) in these patients.. The study population included 18 consecutive patients with untreated gastric (n = 6) or colorectal (n = 12) carcinoma and 18 control subjects. Blood samples were collected from cancer patients the day before surgery and on the following 1, 7, 30 postoperative days. Results of PCT and CRP were corrected for plasma volume changes.. Pre-surgery values of CRP, but not of PCT, were significantly higher in cancer patients than in controls. Both markers in patients without postoperative infections reached peak-levels on day 1. On day seven, CRP values were still significantly increased, while those of PCT were non statistically different from pre-surgery. By receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, both PCT and CRP discriminated patients with or without pneumonia on the day 7 post-surgery, but not between patients with or without surgical wound infection.. Taken together, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that PCT might be a more useful marker than CRP for monitoring the postoperative course and diagnose severe perioperative bacterial infections in patients undergoing surgery for gastrointestinal malignancies after the 7th postoperative day.

Topics: Bacterial Infections; Biomarkers; C-Reactive Protein; Calcitonin; Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide; Colorectal Neoplasms; Humans; Intraoperative Complications; Monitoring, Physiologic; Postoperative Complications; Postoperative Period; Protein Precursors; Reference Values; Stomach Neoplasms; Time Factors; Wound Healing

The current study was to determine the serum/plasma levels of VEGF, IL-6, malondialdehyde (MDA), nitric oxide (NO), PCT and CRP in gastric carcinoma and correlation with the stages of the disease and accompanying infection.. We examined the levels of serum VEGF, IL-6, PCT, CRP and plasma MDA, NO in 42 preoperative gastric cancer patients and 23 healthy subjects. There were infection anamneses that had no definite origin in 19 cancer patients.. The VEGF levels (mean+/-SD; pg/mL) were 478.05+/-178.29 and 473.85+/-131.24 in gastric cancer patients with and without infection, respectively, and these values were not significantly different (P>0.05). The levels of VEGF, CRP, PCT, IL-6, MDA and NO in cancer patients were significantly higher than those in healthy controls and the levels of CRP, PCT, IL-6, MDA and NO were statistically increased in infection group when compared with non-infection group (P<0.001).. Although serum VEGF concentrations were increased in gastric cancer, this increase might not be related to infection. CRP, PCT, IL-6, MDA and NO have obvious drawbacks in the diagnosis of infections in cancer patients. These markers may not help to identify infections in the primary evaluation of cancer patients and hence to avoid unnecessary antibiotic treatments as well as hospitalization. According to the results of this study, IL-6, MDA, NO and especially VEGF can be used as useful parameters to diagnose and grade gastric cancer.

Topics: Abdominal Pain; Aged; Biomarkers; Biomarkers, Tumor; C-Reactive Protein; Calcitonin; Calcitonin Gene-Related Peptide; Female; Helicobacter Infections; Humans; Interleukin-6; Male; Malnutrition; Malondialdehyde; Middle Aged; Neoplasm Staging; Nitric Oxide; Oxidative Stress; Protein Precursors; Stomach Neoplasms; Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A; Vomiting; Weight Loss