Sebahattin Celik, M Eyüp Yılmaz and Ethem Bilgiç
Background: Tumor markers and inflammatory markers by themselves are associated with prognostic and clinicopathological factors in colorectal cancers. The objective of this study was to explore the relationship between the levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and the neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in colorectal cancer.
Methods: We conducted a retrospective clinical study of 145 patients diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer between January 1, 2013 and December 30, 2014 in two hospitals in Turkey. Only patients whose records contained demographic information (age, gender), pathology reports, and radiology reports were included in the study. The levels of CEA and LDH as well as the LNR were noted.
Results: Of the 145 patients, 87 (60%) patients had colon cancer and 58 (40%) patients had rectal cancer. Over half of all the patients (55.8%) had stage 3 or stage 4 cancer. The median levels of CEA and LDH were in the normal clinical range while the NLR was 2.9. In both colon and rectal tumors, there was a weak positive but statistically significant relationship between CEA, LDH and NLR (r<25 and p<0.05 in all comparisons). In analyzing the correlation in terms of tumor stage, there was no good correlation. The strongest relationship (r=0.424, p=0.022) was between CEA and LDH in stage 1 tumors. In all other tumor stages there was no correlation.
Conclusion: In colorectal cancers; CEA, LDH and NLR may be important individually, but no relation appears between them.
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Immunochemistry & Immunopathology received 174 citations as per Google Scholar report
