A study of early pregnancy factor activity in the sera of women with trophoblastic tumor

PROBLEM: To detect whether or not the early pregnancy factor (EPF)-like act ivity, or chaperonin 10, could be in the sera of patients with trophoblasti c tumor in order to find another more efficient means to diagnose this kind tumor. METHOD OF STUDY: The rosette inhibition assay was used to detect EPF-like a ctivity in 216 sera, collected from patients with gestational trophoblastic tumor, including 47 sera of patients with choriocarcinoma. 68 sera of pati ents bearing invasive mole, and 101 sera of patients with vesicular mole. RESULTS: The accuracy of diagnosing malignant trophoblastic tumor by detect ing EPF-like activity is 91.3% (105/115), with a false positive rate of 14. 58% and a false negative rate of 4.48% by this method. Furthermore, the ros ette inhibition titer (RIT) values have significant difference (P < 0.001) between the sera in patients with malignant trophoblastic tumor before trea tment and those after treatment. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that diagnosis of malignant trophoblas tic tumor could be made with an accuracy of 91.3% by detecting EPF-like act ivity and that EPF-like activity could be used as an indicator to distingui sh benign from malignant trophoblastic tumor.