Serum level of the periostin, a homologue of an insect cell adhesion molecule, in thymoma patients

Periostin protein shares structural and sequence homology with fasciclin 1, which is an insect adhesion molecule. Periostin has a typical signal pepti de at the N-terminal end suggesting it is a secreted protein. Recently, we developed a novel sandwich chemiluminescence assay to determine serum conce ntrations of periostin. We investigated the serum periostin level in thymom a patients. and attempted to determine the correlation between serum perios tin level and clinicopathological factors of thymoma patients who had under gone surgery between January 1994 and July 1996. Serum periostin levels wer e not significantly different between the thymoma patients (1264.4 +/- 122. 9 ng/ml) and the normal control (962.0 +/- 118.6 ng/ml) (P = 0.0877). There was no relationship between serum periostin level and age, gender or patho logical subtype. However the serum periostin level of stage IV patients (14 97.0 +/- 285.8 ng/ml) was significantly higher than normal control (P = 0.0 460). These data suggest that serum periostin level may indicate tumor inva sion and progression of thymoma. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.