Neurospecific proteins in the serum of patients with brain tumors.

Neurospecific proteins S-100 and GFAP were measured in the serum of 145 patients with neural tumors and 69 healthy individuals. In patients with glyoblastomas, the concentrations of S-100 and GFAP were significantly higher than in patients with anaplastic astrocytomas, benign meningiomas, and brain metastases and in healthy individuals. Serum S-100 concentrations in patients with anaplastic astrocytomas, benign meningiomas, and brain metastases were similar; significant difference from the control was found only for patients with cerebral metastases. A specific feature of GFAP was high incidence of its detection in patients with glioblastomas (83%) compared to other groups of patients with neural tumors and healthy volunteers who demonstrated practically zero level of this protein. These findings attest to the possibility of using S-100 as an additional biochemical criterion of brain involvement in tumor patients and GFAP as a glioblastoma marker.