Diagnostic role of carbohydrate antigen 72-4 for gastrointestinal malignancy screening in Chinese patients: A prospective study.

OBJECTIVE: Over the past decades, carbohydrate antigen 72-4 (CA72-4) was thought to be a tumor marker that was elevated in healthy individuals and patients with malignancies, including gastrointestinal (GI), ovarian, endometrial and lung malignancies. Furthermore, studies found that elevated serum CA72-4 might predict digestive tumors, especially gastric tumors, although there was still neither a sensitive nor specific tumor biomarker for gastric cancer (GC). This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of CA72-4 in predicting malignancies, especially GC.

METHODS: Altogether 403 patients underwent a CA72-4 test after admission to the Department of Gastroenterology in Changhai Hospital, the Second Military Medical University, from 1 June 2015 to 31 October 2015. Their age and sex, main symptoms, and final diagnoses were summarized.

RESULTS: The positive predictive value, negative predictive value, positive likelihood ratio and negative likelihood ratio of CA72-4 for diagnosing GC were 31.58%, 79.17%, 1.70, and 0.97, respectively. In the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the area under the ROC curve for discriminating between patients with GC and those without was 0.62.

CONCLUSION: Performing a CA72-4 test on its own is of little use for predicting malignances, especially GC, in patients with GI diseases.