Sera from 813 patients were examined independently by 3 test centers for the presence of alpha‐fetoprotein (AFP). The sera were collected at 5 different African centers and 2 non‐African centers. There was disagreement in the serologic results among the 3 test laboratories in only 27, or 3.3%, of cases. A clinical and/or histologic diagnosis of primary liver cancer had been made in 231 of the cases in which there was serologic agreement, and 151, or 65.4%, of these were positive for AFP. If only those cases with histologic confirmation of liver cell cancer were included, the percentage of cases with AFP increases to 75%. Analysis of the results from each collection center has been made, and the basis for “false‐positives” and serologic disagreements is discussed. The test has proven to be highly specific for primary liver cell cancer and may be used with advantage in differential diagnosis of this disease and in epidemiologic studies.

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Levels of human pregnancy-specific or trophoblast-specific beta1-globulin (TBG) were measured by double-antibody radioimmunoassay (RIA) in 103 patients with trophoblastic tumours and in 114 patients with a variety of non-trophoblastic tumours. The sensitivity of RIA for TBG was about 1 ng per ml. Twenty healthy adult females and males had levels below 1 ng per ml. Using the RIA for measurement of TBG in sera which were selected from immunodiffusion-TBG-negative samples, we detected elevated TBG levels in 76.7% of cases with trophoblastic tumours and in 15% of different cases with non-trophoblastic malignancies. The diagnostic and prognostic significance of the measurement of TBG levels by RIA in patients with trophoblastic tumours is discussed.

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