Predictive Evaluations of Preoperative Serum Sialosyl - Tn Antigen Expression in the Patients with Advanced Gastric Cancer

Roh, Myung Hwan

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
Sialosyl-Tn (sTn), a mucin-associated carbohydrate antigen, is not expressed by normal mucin- producing cells of the stomach but is expressed in metaplastic, premalignant and malignant gastric tissues. In general, the rate of immunohistochemical expression of sTn in gastric cancer tissue is about 50~70%, and its prognostic role in gastric cancer is variable. And there is no report in Korea about serum sTn expression of gastric cancer patients, so we have examined the expression of sTn with the serum of gatric cancer patients and examined the possibility of tumor marker and of factors for prognosis.
METHODS
Serum sTn expression was examined by enzyme linked immuno-sorbent assay (ELISA) in 46 patients with advanced gastric cancer, confirmed at the Dong-A University Hospital, between June, 1997 and June, 1998. We examined the correlations between the expression of serum sTn antigen and patients age, sex, tumor location and size, degree of differentiation, stage, serosal invasion, peritoneal dissemination, hepatic metastasis, lymph node metastasis and Borrmann type.
RESULTS
The overall serum sTn expression was higher in cases of advanced gastric cancer than controls (p<0.05). Advanced stages had higher serum sTn expression than lower stages (p=0.0001). And in cases of serosal invasion, peritoneal dissemination and hepatic metastasis, the serum sTn expression was higher than not (p<0.05). Lymph node metastasis, one of determinant factors of stage, had high serum sTn expression but it had not statistical significance (p=0.067), and in cases of sex, tumor location and size, histologic grade and gross findings of tumor (Borrmann type) had not high expression of serum sTn (p>0.05).
CONCLUSION
Higher expression of serum sTn in advanced gastric cancer can be proposed the possibility of the role as a tumor marker. And its higher expressions in many fields of independent prognostic factors also can be proposed the possibility of another independent prognostic factor.