STUDY OF CORRELATİON OF HE4 AND CA125 AS SPECİFİC BİOMARKERS FOR THE DETECTİON OF OVARİAN CANCER

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the sixth most common gynecological malignancy characterized by an increasing incidence rate with age and in post-menopausal status. Carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125) is the established biomarker for OC detection. As CA125 effectiveness in the identification of the malignancy is threatened by its low diagnostic specificity human epididymis protein 4 (He4) measurements in serum have been proposed for improving the specificity of laboratory identification of OC. The aim of our study was to evaluate the diagnostic performance of both CA125 and He4 in discriminating benign ovarian cancer from other benign gynecologic diseases. Our study group consisted of 139 women outpatients aged between 11 and 72 years old (mean age 39 years), which were diagnosed with an ovarian cyst during a visit to a gynecologist or during investigation of unknown abdominal pain by computer tomography. Fasting blood samples were collected and centrifugated using standardized procedure. All analyses were performed in plasma. CA125 and He4 plasma concentrations were determined using automated analyzer Cobas®6000 (Rosche Diagnostics). The data were statistically treated by using Descriptive Statistics. A moderate correlation was found between values of CA125 and He4 (r=0.619). The mean plasma concentration for CA125 was 30.58 U/ml (30.58±36.54) and for He4 was 49.62pM/L (49.62±32.22). Measuring together CA125 and He4 biomarkers can be used for a better classification and diagnosis of women with an ovarian cystic pelvic mass.