Detections of TA,CEA mRNA and CK19 mRNA in peripheral blood of patients with non-small cell lung cancer

AIM: To explore the clinical implications of detections of telomerase activity (TA), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) mRNA and carcinoembryonic antigen CK19 mRNA in the diagnosis of blood matastasis of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). METHODS: Blood samples from 74 cases of NSCLC (NSCLC group), 51 cases of benign pulmonary disease (disease control group), 36 healthy persons (healthy control group)were detected for CEA mRNA and CK19 mRNA by reverse transcriptase-nested primers-polymerase chain reaction (RT-NP-PCR) and for TA by telomeric repeat amplification protocol-hybridism-enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (RTAP-Hyb-ELISA). RESULTS: The positive rates of CK19mRNA,CEA mRNA and TA in blood of the NSCLC group were far higher than those of the other 2 groups (P0.01). The specificity and sensitivity of CEA mRNA and TA were higher than those of CK19 mRNA. There were no differences in the 3 indexes among the different types of NSCLC (P0.05). CONCLUSION: The detections of TA, CEA mRNA and CK19 mRNA in blood are useful for the diagnosis of blood matastasis of NSCLC. TA and CEA mRNA are more sensitive than CK19 mRNA, but the 3 markers may not be helpful to distinguish the sort of NSCLC.