Can a patient with neuroblastoma be diagnosed by a single urine sample collected randomly?
We have observed that a fairly large amount of vanillylmandelic acid and homovanillic acid in urine samples taken randomly from patients with a tumor of about 10 g was less than the cutoff values and overlapped with the respective ranges of normal infants. Consequently, with only a single random urine sample there is a risk of overlooking a patient, especially in cases where the tumor is small. However, according to theoretical calculation, several random urine samples may enable us to discriminate a patient from a normal infant and can replace the 24-hour urine accumulation for 3 days which is currently performed for final judgement in the mass screening of neuroblastoma.
Nishi
M
M
Department of Public Health, Sapporo Medical College, Japan.
Miyake
H
H
Takeda
T
T
Takasugi
N
N
Hanai
J
J
Kawai
T
T
D006719:Homovanillic Acid / Q000652:urine*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D009447:Neuroblastoma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000652:urine; D011897:Random Allocation; D014642:Vanilmandelic Acid / Q000652:urine*
D014642:Vanilmandelic Acid; D006719:Homovanillic Acid