Abstract
The aims of our work were 1) to determine the diagnostic performance of an immunoradiometric assay of chromogranin A (CgA) in smal cell lung cancer and 2) to compare its discriminatory power with that of neuron-specific enolase (NSE), the marker currently used for SCLC. We selected 166 cases of small cell (64) and non-small cell (102) lung cancer and 106 cases of non-malignant lung diseases as controls. Both CgA and NSE were assayed by immunoradiometric methods and cutoff values were established on the basis of a pre-fixed specificity of 95% in non-malignant lung diseases. The CgA assay showed better diagnostic sensitivity than NSE in SCLC (61% versus 57%), especially in limited disease, and a low positivity rate in NSCLC with respect to NSE (14% versus 22%). By contrast, NSE reflected disease extent more accurately than CgA (U test: CgA p<0.05, NSE p<0.001). Finally, we found that the CgA assay was not affected by hemolysis whereas NSE serum levels greatly increased in hemolyzed sera. In conclusion, CgA assaying by an IRMA method is a reliable procedure in the diagnosis of SCLC. NSE remains the marker of choice in staging and monitoring of the disease. Further studies are needed to evaluate the prognostic significance of the marker and its role in therapy monitoring and patient follow-up.