Evaluation of serum sialic acid in the diagnosis of malignant tumor and its clinical application

Objective To approach into the effect of serum sialic acid(SA)on the diagnosis and metastasis of malignant tumor.Methods SA levels in serum from60potients with preoperative malignant tumors,16without and16with postoperative metas-tasis,30with benign diseases and55normal controls were determined with enzymic method.Re sults The SA levels of preoperative malignant tumor group and postopera-tive metastatic group were higher than those of benign diseases group and control group(P0.01).The postoperative levels of patient without mefastasis were lower than those be-fore operation;this group and the benign diseases group had no significant differences from the control group(P0.05).Conclusion The serum SA levels are valuable for the diagnosis of malignant tumors and surveillance of metastasis after operation.