Clinical Value of Combined Detection of Serum sTim-3 and Pepsinogen for Gastric Cancer Diagnosis

Lingli Chen; Jianfeng Hong; Renjing Hu; Xiaomei Yu; Xindong Chen; Shaoxiong Zheng; Yuan Qin; Xiumei Zhou; Yigang Wang; Liping Zheng; Hongming Fang; Pengfei Liu; Biao Huang

doi:10.2147/CMAR.S328312

Clinical Value of Combined Detection of Serum sTim-3 and Pepsinogen for Gastric Cancer Diagnosis

Cancer Manag Res. 2021 Oct 9:13:7759-7769. doi: 10.2147/CMAR.S328312. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Lingli Chen^#¹, Jianfeng Hong^#², Renjing Hu^#³, Xiaomei Yu¹, Xindong Chen¹, Shaoxiong Zheng¹, Yuan Qin¹, Xiumei Zhou¹, Yigang Wang¹, Liping Zheng², Hongming Fang², Pengfei Liu⁴, Biao Huang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Immunoassay Laboratory, College of Life Sciences and Medicine, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Laboratory, Affiliated Xiaoshan Hospital, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Laboratory, The Affiliated Wuxi No.2 People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Department of Gastroenterology, The Jiangyin Clinical College of Xuzhou Medical University, Wuxi, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: The present study aimed to evaluate the clinical value of the combined detection of soluble T cell immunoglobulinand mucin domain molecule 3 (sTim-3) and pepsinogen (PG) in sera for gastric cancer (GC) diagnosis.

Patients and methods: The double antibody sandwich method was used to establish a highly sensitive time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay for the detection of sTim-3. Serum sTim-3, PGI, and PGII levels in 149 GC patients (123 first-diagnosis GC patients and 26 post-GC patients), 81 patients with benign gastric disease (BGD), and 73 healthy controls were quantitatively detected. The clinical diagnostic value of the combined detection of sTim-3 and PG in GC was analyzed.

Results: Serum sTim-3 levels in GC (20.41 ± 9.55 ng/mL) and BGD (16.50 ± 9.76 ng/mL) patients were significantly higher (P < 0.001) than those in healthy controls (9.22 ± 3.40 ng/mL). Combined detection of sTim-3 and PGI/PGII (AUC: 0.9330, sensitivity: 86.44%, and specificity: 91.78%) showed a high diagnostic value for GC. When the level of PGI/PGII was less than 12.11 and that of sTim-3 was greater than 14.30 ng/mL, the positive rate of the control group was reduced to 0%, and the positive detection rate of GC was 54.47%. In addition, in post-operative patients, serum sTim-3 levels in the recurrence group (33.56 ± 4.91 ng/mL) were significantly higher than those in the no recurrence group (11.95 ± 5.16 ng/mL).

Conclusion: sTim-3 levels in BGD and GC sera were significantly higher than those in the control group sera. Additionally, sTim-3 serum levels can predict recurrence in post-operative patients. Compared with PG alone, the combined detection of serum PG and sTim-3 can significantly improve the detection sensitivity and specificity of BGD and GC.

Keywords: T cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain molecule 3; biomarker; gastric cancer; time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay.

Grants and funding

Funding was provided by the Social Development Fund of Zhejiang Province (No. LGF20H200008), the Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (No. 2020C03066), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 31670857 and 31700737, and the Key Research & Development Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2020637).