COMPARATIVE-STUDY BETWEEN CYTOLOGY AND DOT-ELISA FOR EARLY DETECTION OF BLADDER-CANCER

Schistosomiasis remains one of the major public health problems of the tropics. Conservative estimates place the number of infected individu als at about 200 millions. In Egypt carcinoma of the urinary bladder a ssociated with schistosomiases is the foremost oncologic problem, beca use of its high frequency and the late presentation of cases. A newly developed monoclonal antibody CK1K10 to keratinized grade 1 squamous c ell carcinoma was used in a dot enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Dot ELISA) to test urine samples of 118 patients with bladder carcinoma, 291 patients with genitourinary pathology other than bladder carcinoma , in addition to 550 healthy controls. The overall sensitivity of the dot ELISA was 90% among 118 patients with bladder carcinoma, Twenty-se ven of 33 transitional cell carcinoma cases (82%), 68 of the 71 squamo us cell carcinoma cases (96%), 7 of 10 undifferentiated tumors cases ( 70%), and 4 of 4 adenocarcinoma were positive with this assay. The spe cificity was 90% in our sample population. A comparative study of diag nosis by cytology and dot ELISA was carried out in 57 patients with bl adder carcinoma. Dot ELISA was found to be superior as a screening too l for high risk groups (P < .001 using chi-square test). Cytology dete cted 21% of transitional cell carcinoma, 68% of squamous cell carcinom a, 50% of adenocarcinoma, and 86% of undifferentiated tumors. The dot ELISA assay should be useful for screening high-risk groups because it does not require sophisticated equipment, is noninvasive, does not re quire highly trained staff, and can be performed in less than 30 minut es.