[Epidermal growth factor in the urine of patients with renal cell carcinoma and bladder tumor]

Abstract

We evaluated the concentrations of immunoreactive epidermal growth factor (EGF) in urine samples from 14 patients with renal cell carcinoma, 16 patients with bladder tumor and 43 non-malignant controls by using radioimmunoassay. In the non-malignant controls, urinary EGF excretion significantly decreased with age (r = -0.46, p less than 0.01), and females excreted significantly more EGF than males [16.3 +/- 7.6 and 9.9 +/- 6.0 (mean +/- SD) ng/mg.creatinine; p less than 0.05]. There was no significant difference between urinary EGF excretion in the patients with renal cell carcinoma and non-malignant controls matched for sex and age (15.9 +/- 12.0 and 14.5 +/- 7.9 ng/mg.creatinine). The difference in excretion of EGF between the patients with bladder tumor and non-malignant controls also was not significant (9.9 +/- 5.6 and 11.7 +/- 7.0 ng/mg.creatinine). These findings indicate, that urine EGF has little usefulness as a tumor marker for renal cell carcinoma and bladder tumor.