[Clinical significance of sialic acid determinations in patients with gynecologic cancer]

Abstract

Sialic acid (SA) levels were measured in human sera by the enzymatic procedure using neuraminidase. Sera were obtained from healthy controls (70 females), patients with uterine myoma (27 cases), cervical cancer (53 cases), benign ovarian tumor (36 cases) and ovarian cancer (70 cases). The upper normal limit of 72mg/dl was obtained from the mean +2SD for healthy controls. The mean value for serum SA in patients with primary ovarian cancer (71.2 +/- 20.6mg/dl) was statistically higher than those for both uterine myomas (59.0 +/- 12.4mg/dl) and controls. The mean level for SA in patients with ovarian cancer was further elevated and it was statistically higher than that for benign ovarian tumors (58.8 +/- 14.3mg/dl), uterine myomas and cervical cancers. SA levels were not well correlated with tumor histologic types or clinical stages of cancer patients. As to the relationship between SA and the clinical course of cancer patients, changes in SA values were well correlated with the curability of tumor resection. The lack of specificity, however, will require careful interpretation of the SA value to assure that inflammation is not causing changes in the test values, because SA shows a transient increase due to the inflammatory reaction during the postoperative period even in patients with benign tumor. These results indicate that SA determination is highly recommended as an addition to the conventional diagnostic methods.