The Determination of Serum Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor in Gastric Cancer

Purpose To determine the correlation between pretreatment serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and clinicopathologic features in patients with gastric carcinoma.Pretreatment serum VEGF was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) in 20 healthy controls and 60 patients with gastric carcinoma.Serum VEGF was found to be significantly elevated in patients with primary gastric carcinoma (P0.001) and with recurrent tumors (P=0.003) in contrast to controls. Significant differences were observed when serum VEGF was categorized by tumor depth(P=0.002),lymph node metastasis (P0.001),distant metastasis (P0.001 )and TNM stage (P0.001), but no differences were observed between the serum VEGF of stageⅠand that of normal control(P=0.276). There were no significant association among gender,age,location,histology grade with serum VEGF(P0.05).[Conclusion]Serum VEGF was associated with the development,invasion,metastasis and other biological behaviors of gastric carcinoma.It is not a useful marker for diagnosis of early gastric carcinoma.It has some significance for choice of multimodality therapy.