Evaluation of Plasma Malondialdehyde as a Biomarker in Patients with Carcinoma of stomach

Carcinoma of stomach is the second most fatal malignancy. Tumor markers like carcinoem-bryonic antigen (CEA) are of little benefit in early diagnosis and monitoring the progress in these patients due to their low specificity and sensitivity. Hence there is a need to look for bet-ter biochemical markers. We conducted a case control study involving thirty healthy indi-viduals and twenty two patients with stomach carcinoma. All of the control group members had normal blood chemistry, ECG, Chest X-ray, blood counts apart from a normal clinical ex-amination. All the patients included in the study were untreated cases and had a confirmed histo-logical diagnosis. The parameters studied included Malondialdehyde (MDA), and Carcinoem-bryonic antigen [CEA]. The mean age for patients and controls was 51 and 45 years, respectively. There was an increase in the levels CEA (p<0.0001) and MDA (p<0.0001) whereas the levels of vi-tamin E decreased (p<0.05) in the patient group compared to controls. The ROC analysis showed significant diagnostic accuracy of MDA as tumor marker. Logistic regression studies revealed a significant association of MDA with carcinoma stomach. As a biomarker for carcinoma stomach, MDA had significant diagnostic value independent of CEA levels. The sensitivity and specificity of MDA was more than that of CEA. Combined use of MDA & CEA was found to yield better diagnostic information than individual use of CE