An enzyme immunoassay procedure for cancer antigen 125 evaluated

The performance of a new enzyme immunoassay (EIA) procedure (Abbott Labs.) for cancer antigen 125 (CA 125) met or exceeded the manufacturer's claims for all analytical variables examined. Overall correlation with results obtained with a radioimmunoassay (RIA) were good. However, near the decision thresholds typically chosen to define a positive result for ovarian carcinoma, EIA results were 10 to 20 arbitrary units/mL less than the RIA results. At specific decision thresholds, therefore, the sensitivities and specificities of the EIA and RIA procedure differed. Adjusting the decision thresholds gave a similar optimum efficiency for each procedure: EIA, 82.9% (decision threshold, 35 units/mL); RIA, 83.4% (decision threshold, 54 units/mL). Receiver-operating characteristic curves showed that the two procedures' ability to distinguish patients with active ovarian carcinoma from those with disease in remission was the same.