Markers??

Hey guys, Hope everyone is hangin' in! At the risk of sounding like a "marker zealot" i wanted to share a study that i received in my BCN newsletter yesterday. If I weren't such a techno weenie i'd post it in the "articles of interest". i will just give the highlight. this was published recently by ASCO, "How can CEA and CA 15-3 be used for estimation of the clinical status and effectiveness of therapy during metastatic breast cancer?"
Background: Tumor markers like CEA and CA 15-3 are often used in follow up care of bc, but mainly due to a lack of knowledge, experience but also confidence-the actual situation is more to observe kinetics than to react on these results. Therefore we try to validate the significance of CEA and CA 15-3 in the course of metastatic disease.

101 MBC pts. All using systemic tx of various kinds totalling 223 courses of tx and CEA and CA 15-3 checked every 3-4 weeks.

Results: Meanwhile we evaluated CEA and CA15-3 at 1st dx of mets and at every further moment of progression/new mets. At 1st metastatic disease CEA was in 53% above the 95th percentile of healthy individuals. and CA 15-3 in 74% (19% CEA and CA 15-3 negative) with enhancing percentage of senitivity with increasing numbers of further events 'progressive disease (PD)' (PD CEA 52%/CA 15-369%, 3rd PD 65%/80%, 4th PD 74%/93%), decreasing number of false negatives (3% 4th PD) and a general shift of the value levels of CEA (ng/ml)/ CA 15-3 (U/ml) with the number of events, e.g. the medians 1st PD CEA 2.7/Ca 15-3 43.4; 2nd PD 2.6/46.2; 3rd PD 5.3/78.5, 4th PD 8.8/92.5). Okay, so...

Conclusion: Our results show a clear correlation between CEA/CA 15-3 and the number of events as well as effectiveness of therapy.

Anyway I found it interesting and worth sharing.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE joy