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Highly elevated serum CA-125 levels in patients with non-malignant gynecological diseases
Rong-Huan He1, Wei-Miao Yao, Li-Yan Wu
1Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Women's Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310006, Zhejiang, People's Republic of China.
Purposes:
To identify patients with highly elevated serum CA-125 levels and analyze their clinical characteristics.
Methods:
Patients with non-malignant gynecologic disease (NMGDs, n = 41), in whom serum CA-125 levels were over 1,000 IU/ml were retrospectively enrolled in the study. Seventy-one patients with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), in whom, serum CA-125 levels were over 1,000 IU/ml were included as the comparison group. Clinical parameters were compared between the two groups.
Results:
In NMGDs group, 43.90% of the patients had endometriosis. The median of serum CA-125 level in NMGDs was much lower than that of EOC subjects (P < 0.001). Compared to EOC group, the patients in NMGDs group were much younger (P < 0.001) and had fewer histories of pelvic masses (P < 0.001) but had more clinical complaints such as acute abdominal symptoms (P < 0.001) and/or abnormal vaginal bleeding (P = 0.022). Clinical progresses of these two groups were correlated with changes of serum CA-125 levels by follow-up for up to 386 days.
Conclusions:
High levels of serum CA-125 were found not only in the EOC, but also in some NMGDs, especially in the reproductive patients with complaints of acute abdomen symptoms or abnormal vaginal bleeding.
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