CHROMOGRANIN A SERUM LEVELS IN ELDERLY PATIENTS WITH OVARIAN CANCER

Background and aims: The observation of neuroendocrine activity during clinical course of ovarian cancer, suggested the use of neuroendocrine serum markers to detect this tumor. We analyze the incidence of pre-operative circulating Chromogranin A (CgA) in a population of ovarian cancer patients. Materials and methods: We investigated the role of serum concentrations of CgA and CA125, in 134 women with ovarian cancer, enrolled between 2000-2008. We also examined the values of CgA and CA125 at different clinical stages of ovarian cancer. Results: We observed significant increase in CgA and CA125 serum levels when comparing patients with ovarian cancer in stage I vs stage II (p<0.001), stage I vs stage III (p<0.001), stage I vs stage IV (p<0.001), stage II vs stage III (p<0.001), stage II vs stage IV (p<0.001). In patients with ovarian carcinoma in stage IV a correlation between CgA and CA125 with a difference of 0.718 was observed (p<0.001). Conclusions: A high level of CgA signalizes extensive disease and larger tumor burden. CCgA may be associated rather with proliferation than with tumor secretion activity.