TY - JOUR T1 - Soluble E-cadherin is a valid prognostic marker in gastric carcinoma JF - Gut JO - Gut SP - 808 LP - 811 DO - 10.1136/gut.48.6.808 VL - 48 IS - 6 AU - A O O Chan AU - S K Lam AU - K M Chu AU - C M Lam AU - E Kwok AU - S Y Leung AU - S T Yuen AU - S Y K Law AU - W M Hui AU - K C Lai AU - C Y Wong AU - H C Hu AU - C L Lai AU - J Wong Y1 - 2001/06/01 UR - http://gut.bmj.com/content/48/6/808.abstract N2 - BACKGROUND Gastric cancer remains a major cause of cancer mortality globally but no good prognostic tumour marker is available. Soluble fragment of E-cadherin protein has been reported to increase in the sera of patients with cancer and recently was found to be elevated in 67% of patients with gastric cancer.AIMS To investigate if serum soluble E-cadherin is a valid prognostic marker in gastric cancer.METHODS Concentrations of soluble E-cadherin from 116 patients with histologically confirmed gastric adenocarinoma and 40 healthy subjects were measured using an immunoenzymometric method with a commercially available sandwich ELISA kit based on monoclonal antibodies.RESULTS The logarithm of the means of soluble E-cadherin concentration was significantly higher in patients with gastric cancers (mean 3.85 (SD 0.28)) than in healthy subjects (3.71 (0.18)) (p=0.001), and in palliative/conservatively treated cancers (3.91 (0.35)) than in operable cancers (3.78 (0.19)) (p=0.015). The logarithm of the concentrations correlated with tumour size (p=0.032) and carcinoembryonic antigen concentrations (p=0.001). The cut off value calculated from discriminant analysis on operability and inoperability/palliative treatment was 7025 ng/ml. Soluble E-cadherin concentrations higher than this cut off value predicted tumour (T4) depth invasion (p=0.020, confidence interval (CI) 1.008–1.668) and palliative/conservative treatment (p=0.023, CI 1.038–2.514). In contrast, the relative risks for lymph node (N2) metastasis, distant metastasis, and stage III/IV disease were 1.41, 1.33, and 1.55 respectively, despite not reaching statistical significance.CONCLUSION Serum soluble E-cadherin is a potential valid prognostic marker for gastric cancer. A high concentration predicts palliative/conservative treatment and T4 invasion.CEAcarcinoembryonic antigen ER -