Abstract
Purpose: :
The serum biomarkers osteopontin (OPN), S-100, melanoma-inhibitory activity (MIA), and tissue polypeptide-specific antigen (TPS) were found to be significantly elevated in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma, as compared to disease-free patients. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of treating the primary uveal melanoma by enucleation or brachytherapy on the levels of serum biomarkers.
Methods: :
Levels of serum biomarkers were analyzed for 75 uveal melanoma patients. The serum biomarker levels were measured using the ELISA method. A matched-pairs analysis was used to compare baseline (pre-treatment) marker levels with those measured at 1, 4, and 10 months after treatment. Differences in biomarker levels were analyzed over the entire group and for each treatment group separately.
Results: :
Of the 75 patients, 62 underwent brachytherapy and 13 were enucleated. One month following treatment S-100, MIA, and TPS, levels did not change, while OPN increased (11.51 to 13.11 ng/ml, p = 0.0430). Four months after treatment there were no changes in marker levels from baseline, except for a decrease in S-100 levels in the enucleated patients (0.09 to 0.06 µg/L, p = 0.0492). S-100 levels decreased in the brachytherapy patient group (0.11 to 0.08 µg/L, p = 0.0251) after 10 months. No other changes in marker levels were detected at the 10-month time point.
Conclusions: :
The statistically significant changes in OPN and S-100 levels bear no clinical significance in comparison with the previously published magnitude of increase in serum marker levels upon the appearance of metastatic disease in the liver. Since treatment of primary uveal melanoma does not have a considerable impact on serum biomarkers, these results emphasize the usefulness of these biomarkers in the early detection of metastatic uveal melanoma in the liver.
Keywords: melanoma • oncology • tumors