title: [Tumor markers of ovarian cancer].
abstract: Many of the recently developed tumor markers are carbohydrate antigens, and are clinically useful for the diagnosis of ovarian cancers. These carbohydrate antigens can be classified into three major categories; core protein-related antigens (CP-RA), core of carbohydrate chain-related antigens (CSC-RA) and periphery of carbohydrate chain-related antigens (PSC-RA). CA125, CA602, and CA130 belong to CP-RA; CA602, CA72-4, and sialyl Tn to CSC-RA; and CA19-9 and sialyl LewisX (SLX), to PSC-RA. The positive rates of CP-RA in the sera of patients with ovarian epithelial cancers are usually very high except in the case of mucinous cystadenocarcinomas. Meanwhile, those of CSC-RA are higher than those of CP-RA in the sera of mucinous cystadenocarcinoma patients, and the false-positive rate of CSC-RA is lower than that of CP-RA in benign ovarian tumors. The diagnostic efficiency of PSC-RA is inferior to that of CA-RA and CSC-RA. Multi-variate analysis has revealed that the combination assay of these CP-RA and CSC-RA markers is the most effective among the carbohydrate antigen assays for the diagnosis of epithelial ovarian cancers. beta-core fragment (beta-CF), a fragment of the hCG beta-subunit missing its carboxyterminal peptide, is often detected in the urine of ovarian cancers, indicating that urine can be a good sample source for ovarian cancer detection.
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, Keio University, Tokyo.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nozawa
mesh_terms: D015295:Antigens, Tumor-Associated, Carbohydrate / Q000032:analysis; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000032:analysis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D010051:Ovarian Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000276:immunology
chemical_list: D015295:Antigens, Tumor-Associated, Carbohydrate; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor