CA 15-3, ceruloplasmin and tissue polypeptide specific antigen as a tumourmarker panel in breast cancer

Background: Tumour markers along with other tests, may be useful in the ass essment of the prognosis, monitoring response to treatment and early detect ion of metastases in breast cancer. The most commonly used breast cancer an tigen is CA 15-3, Objective: To examine the value of CA 15-3, ceruloplasmin and tissue polype ptide specific antigen (TPS) panel in the monitoring of breast cancer. Subjects: Serum concentrations of CA 15-3, ceruloplasmin and TPS were measu red in 90 women: Fifteen controls, sixteen patients with benign breast dise ase (BBD), thirty one patients in remission and twenty eight patients with active breast cancer. Results: The results of CA 15-3, ceruloplasmin and TPS estimates were separ ated into four groups. The patients not in remission were found to have sig nificantly higher levels of CA 15-3 (p<0.001) and ceruloplasmin (p<0.0001) compared with the other three groups, The difference between the patients i n remission, BBD and the control group was not statistically significant (p >0.05) for CA 15-3 and ceruloplasmin, The difference for TPS between the pa tients in remission and the patients with active breast cancer was not stat istically significant (p>0.05), The sensitivities of CA 15-3, ceruloplasmin , and TPS for detecting active breast cancer were 75.0%, 75.0%, and 78.0%, respectively. Conclusion: The highest sensitivity for active breast cancer detection was obtained by the combined use of three tumour markers. We concluded that the re may be an advantage in using panels in the follow up of breast cancer pa tients, although so far such tests have too low a specificity to be of prac tical value in screening.