International journal of gynecological cancer : official journal of the International Gynecological Cancer Society
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Int. J. Gynecol. Cancer · Dec 2010
Highly accurate detection of ovarian cancer using CA125 but limited improvement with serum matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry profiling.
Our objective was to test the performance of CA125 in classifying serum samples from a cohort of malignant and benign ovarian cancers and age-matched healthy controls and to assess whether combining information from matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) time-of-flight profiling could improve diagnostic performance. ⋯ We report unexpectedly good performance of serum CA125 using threshold classification in discriminating healthy controls and women with benign masses from those with invasive ovarian cancer. This highlights the dependence of diagnostic tests on the characteristics of the study population and the crucial need for authors to provide sufficient relevant details to allow comparison. Our study also shows that MS profiling information adds little to diagnostic accuracy. This finding is in contrast with other reports and shows the limitations of serum MS profiling for biomarker discovery and as a diagnostic tool.