Chromogranin a serum levels in elderly patients with ovarian cancer

Background and aims: The observation of neuroendocrine activity during clinical course of ovarian cancer, suggested the useof neuroendocrine serum markers to detect this tumor. We analyze the incidence of pre-operative circulating Chromogranin A (CgA)in a population of ovarian cancer patients.Materials and methods: We investigated the role of serum concentrations of CgA and CA125, in 134 women with ovarian cancer,enrolled between 2000-2008. We also examined the values of CgA and CA125 at different clinical stages of ovarian cancer.Results: We observed significant increase in CgA and CA125 serum levels when comparing patients with ovarian cancer instage I vs stage II (p<0.001), stage I vs stage III (p<0.001), stage I vs stage IV (p<0.001), stage II vs stage III (p<0.001), stage II vsstage IV (p<0.001). In patients with ovarian carcinoma in stage IV a correlation between CgA and CA125 with a difference of 0.718was observed (p<0.001).Conclusions: A high level of CgA signalizes extensive disease and larger tumor burden. CCgA may be associated rather withproliferation than with tumor secretion activity.