Estimation of Albumin and Globulin in Pre and Post Chemotherapy Patients

Cancer is a disease caused when cells divide uncontrollably and spread into surrounding tissue. Chemotherapy is the treatment involving the use of the chemical agents to stop cancer cells from growing. Chemotherapy is the drugs treatment that uses powerful chemical to kill fast-growing cell in the body. While they are the cornerstone of cancer therapeutics, they have severe harmful side effects that sometime even prove fatal. Biochemical analysis of serum proteins are important indicators of any changes from the normal pattern and therefore can be used to study the side effects of chemotherapy. One important cost-effective biochemical assay of determining serum protein pattern is serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP), which is a simple, inexpensive technique of separating bio-molecules on the basis of their net charge, size, and shape. Serum protein electrophoresis is widely used to analyze the patients with Multiple Myeloma and other serum protein disorders. Aberration from the normal pattern of albumin and globulin is an indicator of abnormality or disease including cancer. This technique can be further utilized to study the side effects of chemotherapy by estimation of albumin and globulin in pre and post-chemotherapeutic patients. The current review explores such studies that have dealt with the biochemical estimation of albumin and globulin in cancer patients as well as the effect of chemotherapy on the level of these serum proteins. Extensive electronic search was conducted to select relevant studies and then analyzed and summarized to obtain a better understanding.