Serum arginase activity in postsurgical monitoring of patients with colorectal carcinoma

Abstract

BACKGROUND Colorectal carcinoma (CRC) is one of the most common malignancies. In the current work, the role of arginase as a diagnostic marker in patients with recurrent CRC and colorectal liver metastases (CRCLM) was studied. METHODS Arginase activity was monitored in serum from 40 patients with primary CRC and from 100 patients with CRCLM. Blood was taken before and after patients underwent tumor resection. Studies were conducted for 3 years. RESULTS Preoperative arginase activity in serum from patients with CRC and CRCLM was much greater compared with the arginase activity in serum from healthy control blood donors. One and two cut‐off levels of increased arginase activity were observed in patients with CRC and CRCLM, respectively. After patients underwent tumor resection, the arginase activity decreased to normal values in both patients with CRC and patients with CRCLM. Activity levels remained low in patients who did not develop recurrent CRC or CRCLM (first or second). In patients who developed subsequent recurrences or metastases that appeared after surgery, during 3 years of surveillance, a significant rise in serum arginase activity was observed. The clinical prognosis for patients was worst when the postoperative serum arginase activity was very high, because those patients more often developed second liver metastases or died. CONCLUSIONS The authors conclude that the determination of serum arginase activity may be a complementary test to confirm the occurrence of CRC and may be useful for the early diagnosis of patients who develop recurrent CRC and/or CRCLM. Cancer 2002;94:2930–4. © 2002 American Cancer Society. DOI 10.1002/cncr.10563

l-Arginine as a factor increasing arginase significance in diagnosis of primary and metastatic colorectal cancer

“…Studying arginase activity in the same groups of patients we affirmed its great increase in both CRC and CRCLM patients (3-and 6-fold, respectively). The present results confirmed our previous studies in which we have shown that the determination of serum arginase activity can be used as a test for the early diagnosis of patients with CRC and/or CRCLM [9,10]. However, data from literature indicate that serum arginase activity can be also increased in some non-malignant diseases.…”

“…Ornithine is released from L-arginine by arginase (EC 3.5.3.1). The long termstudies conducted in our department have shown that arginase activity is raised in colorectal carcinoma compared with normal tissue, and it is much higher in blood serum of patients with CRC and CRCLM than in healthy blood donors [8][9][10]. On the base of our results we concluded that the determination of arginase activity can be helpful in diagnosis of colorectal cancer and colorectal cancer liver metastases [9,10].…”

“…The long termstudies conducted in our department have shown that arginase activity is raised in colorectal carcinoma compared with normal tissue, and it is much higher in blood serum of patients with CRC and CRCLM than in healthy blood donors [8][9][10]. On the base of our results we concluded that the determination of arginase activity can be helpful in diagnosis of colorectal cancer and colorectal cancer liver metastases [9,10]. However, serum arginase activity can be increased also in some non-malignant disease such as type 2 diabetes mellitus, asthma, sickle cell anemia, burn or pancreatitis [11][12][13][14][15].…”

Modulation of several waves of gene expression during FGF‐1 induced epithelial‐mesenchymal transition of carcinoma cells

“…Arginase I was also shown to be up‐regulated in wound‐derived fibroblasts [Witte et al, 2002], and in lung metastasis it can be activated to levels well above those found in either primary D122 tumors or B16 melanoma cells (with fold ratios of 22.5 and 4.9, respectively) [Margalit et al, 2003]. Tumor arginase activity has been proposed as a diagnostic marker for recurrent colorectal carcinoma as well as for colorectal liver metastasis [Porembska et al, 2002]. In NBT‐II cells, over the 48 h period of the EMT experiment, arginase I and MMP‐13 were two of the genes that underwent the most dramatic up‐regulation (10.5 and 21.6 fold increases, respectively).…”

Carcinogenic effects of aflatoxin B1 among wheat handlers

“…14,15 Arginase is a hydrolase typically found in the liver, where it catalyzes the final reaction in the synthesis of urea, the so-called livertype arginase. 16 Concurrently, the rise of extrahepatic arginase can increase the level of polyamines, compounds crucial for cell proliferation. Thus, both arginase isoenzymes seem to participate in liver cancerogenesis.…”