Clinical Significance And Diagnostic Value Of Serum Neuro-specific Enolase In Gastric Cancer And Colorectal Cancer

Purpose:This study investigated the auxiliary diagnosis value and clinical significance of preoperative serum neuro-specific enolase(NSE)in gastric cancer(GC)and colorectal cancer(CRC),and the diagnostic viability of combined serum NSE,carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA),cancer antigen(CA)19-9,and CA242.Methods:Clinical cases and data of 666 patients with gastric cancer/colorectal cancer admitted to the gastrointestinal and colorectal surgery department of China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University from July 2015 to March 2019 were collected,as well as data of 298 healthy control group.Data such as gender,age,serum NSE clinicopathological parameters and imaging were collected.Patients with gastric or colorectal cancer,and a healthy control group(n = 666 and 266,respectively)were compared with regard to NSE,CEA,CA19-9,and CA242 serum levels.NSE was analyzed for associations with clinicopathological parameters.To estimate the diagnostic potential of NSE,a receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve was constructed and the area under the curve(AUC)was calculated for different patient subgroups.Results:The median serum NSE level of the gastric/colorectal cancer group(20.925 ng/mL)was significantly higher than that of the control(15.190ng/mL).The median levels of serum NSE,CEA,CA19-9,CA242 in the gastric/colorectal cancer group were statistically significant compared with those in the healthy control group(P<0.05).Serum NSE was significantly correlated with clinicopathological parameters staging,lymph node metastasis(N stage),distant metastasis(M stage),vascular infiltration and nerve invasion(P<0.05).Moreover,Logistic regression analysis shows that lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis in patients with GC/CRC had significant influence on NSE level(P<0.05).The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve(AUC)for NSE in gastric/colorectal cancer(0.769)was higher than for the other three markers(0.571-0.680).The AUC of the combined markers was higher than for any of the markers individually(0.778-0.810).Conclusion:The AUC for NSE alone suggests it may be an independent tumor marker for gastric/colorectal cancer,serum NSE may have good value for an auxiliary diagnosis of gastric/colorectal cancers.Besides,the combination of NSE,CEA,CA19-9,and CA242 performed even betterthan NSE alone.Thus,the combined detection of the 4 tumor markers may be more useful for the diagnosis of GC/CRC.