Screening of gastrointestinal hormone release in patients with lung cancer

The aim of this study was the screening of gastrointestinal (GI) hormones release as possible sensitive tumor markers. The subjects were eight patients with carcinoma of the lung compared with nine healthy controls. Six kinds of GI hormones were measured by the specific radioimmunoassay. It was evaluated by fasting level (F), increased integrated responses (IIR60, IIR180 pmol/l/min) and total integrated responses (TIR60, TIR180 pmol/l/min) after a meal. The data were analyzed by the Student's t-test. The F of pancreatic polypeptide (PP) was significantly higher in patients than that in healthy controls (24.4 vs. 12.3 pmol/l, p = 0.002). Consequently, the sensitivity was 75% (6 out of 8) and specificity was 100% (9 out of 9). Almost all parameters of IIR60, IIR180, TIR60 and TIR180 in PP and peptide YY were significantly higher in patients than in healthy controls (p value: 0.00020-0.021). The other four kinds of hormones showed similar results to the healthy controls. These results seem to indicate that PP and PYY would be useful tumor markers for lung cancer in clinical management.