Clinical Application of Serum Tumor Associated Material (TAM) from Non-small Cell Lung Cancer Patients

Objective: To explore the associations of serum tumor associated material (TAM) with other common tumormarkers like carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA125), carbohydrate antigen19-9(CA19-9) and its clinical application in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.
Methods: A total of 87patients were enrolled into this study, all with histologically or cytologically confirmed NSCLC. With the methodof chemical colorimetry, the level of TAM was determined and compared, while chemiluminescence was usedto measure the levels of common tumor markers.
Results: The level of TAM decreased after chemotherapycompared with before chemotherapy when CT or MRI scans showed disease control. Furthermore, it increasedwhen disease progessed and there was no statistically significant difference in monitoring of TAM and commontumor markers (P>0.05).
Conclusions: Detecting TAM in NSCLC patients has a higher sensitivity and specificity,so it can be used as an indicator for clinical monitoring of lung cancer chemotherapy.