Introduction: Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is the most widely used tumour marker in Uganda and globally. In 1965 Gold and Freedman observed that the CEA molecular marker is present in fetal gut tissues and in tumours of the gastrointestinal tract. Factors which have been found to affect plasma CEA levels include tumour grade, stage, location of the tumour, ploidy status of the tumour, absence or presence of bowel obstruction and liver status. This study aimed to investigate the preoperative plasma CEA level and compare it to clinicopathological features in Ugandan colorectal cancer patients.
Methodology: A prospective observational study was used on 119
recruited colorectal cancer (CRC) participants. Using a standard pretested Data
Extraction Form, data for all the participants was extracted from the clinical
patients’ files in the respective hospitals. A 10 ml blood sample was taken
preoperatively from all the participants to obtain the CEA level in ng/ml.
ANOVA and student’s t-test were used to compare mean CEA levels. Pearson
chi-square tests were used to determine any association between CEA levels and
clinicopathological variables. A p-value of ≤0.05 was statistically
significant.
Results: The mean age of all the participants was 55.9(+/-15.3)
years whilst the mean CEA level was 23.6(+/-8.51) ng/ml. There was no
significant difference between preoperative plasma CEA and topography
(p=0.775), stage (p=0.813), grade (p=0.505) and histopathological subtype
(p=0.940).
Conclusions: There was no difference in preoperative plasma CEA
levels based on histopathological grade, stage, topography and
histopathological subtype of CRC in Ugandan patients. Therefore, the plasma CEA
levels in Ugandan patients did not increase with increasing histopathological
grade and stage and were not affected by the location and histopathological
subtype of the colorectal tumour.
Author (s) Details
Richard Wismayer
Department of Surgery, Masaka Regional Referral Hospital, Masaka,
Uganda, Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, Equator University
for Science and Technology, Masaka, Uganda, Department of Surgery, Faculty of
Health Sciences, Habib Medical School, IUIU University, Kampala, Uganda and
Department of Pathology, School of Biomedical Sciences, College of Health Sciences,
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Julius Kiwanuka
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public
Health, College of Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Henry Wabinga
Department of Pathology, School of Biomedical Sciences, College of
Health Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Michael Odida
Department of Pathology, School of Biomedical Sciences, College of
Health Sciences, Makerere University,
Kampala, Uganda and Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Gulu
University, Gulu, Uganda.
Please see the book here:- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/acmms/v2/2957
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