Serum cytokeratin-19 measured by cyfra21-1 assay in patients with gastrointestinal and gynecologic malignancy.

The serum fragment of cytokeratin 19 was measured in 130 patients with gastrointestinal, breast and gynecologic cancer and 62 patients with benign disease using CYFRA21-1 immunoradiometric assay. Patients with advanced cancer showed the highest level of serum CYFRA21-1. When the cut-off level was set at 2 ng/ml, 7 of 61 patients with earlier stage cancer were positive whereas 45 of 69 patients with advanced cancer had serum CYFRA21-1 levels over 2 ng/ml. In benign gastrointestinal and gynecologic diseases, 4 of 66 patients were positive. Retrospective evaluation revealed a good correlation between the serum CYFRA21-1 concentration and clinical course. CYFRA21-1 may be a useful tumor marker for monitoring of gastrointestinal and gynecologic malignancies.