title: Relationship of total serum sialic acid to sialylglycoprotein acute-phase reactants in malignant melanoma.
abstract: Reported elevations of total serum sialic acid may be a result of shed tumour-related membrane sialyglycoprotein and/or concurrent elevation of non-specific, acute-phase reactant sialoglycoprotein. To clarify further the specificity and sensitivity of serum sialic acid monitoring, analyses of sialic acid by the thiobarbituric acid method and acute-phase reactants by radial immunodiffusion were made using the same malignant melanoma patients' sera. Preliminary studies of IgG, IgA, IgM, ceruloplasmin and C-reactive protein suggested that these would not be valuable monitors of tumour burden. Single serum samples from 59 melanoma patients and age- and sex-matched controls were further examined for sialic acid, alpha 1-acid glycoprotein, alpha 1-antitrypsin, haptoglobin, and alpha 2-macroglobulin. Patients were grouped according to tumour burden. In pairwise statistical tests, differences between groups tended to be greater for sialic acid than for acute-phase reactants. On discriminant analysis , sialic acid was clearly the most significant single discriminator between groups, with an F statistic of P < 0.00005. Although alpha 1-acid glycoprotein was quite strongly correlated with sialic acid, it was not such a good discriminator and did not add significantly to the predictive power of sialic acid alone.
mesh_terms: D002097:C-Reactive Protein / Q000032:analysis; D002570:Ceruloplasmin / Q000032:analysis; D006242:Haptoglobins / Q000032:analysis; D006801:Humans; D007136:Immunoglobulins / Q000032:analysis; D008545:Melanoma / Q000097:blood*; D009961:Orosomucoid / Q000032:analysis; D012794:Sialic Acids / Q000097:blood*; D012795:Sialoglycoproteins / Q000097:blood*; D000515:alpha 1-Antitrypsin / Q000032:analysis; D000511:alpha-Macroglobulins / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D006242:Haptoglobins; D007136:Immunoglobulins; D009961:Orosomucoid; D012794:Sialic Acids; D012795:Sialoglycoproteins; D000515:alpha 1-Antitrypsin; D000511:alpha-Macroglobulins; D002097:C-Reactive Protein; D002570:Ceruloplasmin