Significant Correlation between Salivary and Serum Ca 15-3 in Healthy Women and Breast Cancer Patients

Abstract

The tumor marker CA 15-3 is one of the most import reliable for metastatic breast cancer monitoring. While it is generally assessed in serum of patients, blood sampling is an invasive method compared to saliva sampling which is simple and could be an alternative to blood according to many studies. The aim of this investigation was to assess the relationship between serum and salivary concentrations of the protein CA 15-3 in patients with breast cancer and healthy asymptomatic volunteers. A case-control study was conducted with 60 women: 29 breast cancer patients from the Maternity Hospital Souissi Rabat (Morocco) and 31 healthy asymptomatic women. The CA 15-3 concentrations in saliva and serum samples were assessed using an enzyme immune assay (EIA kits) and comparison between cases and controls was made by the Mann-Whitney test. The correlation between serum and saliva CA 15-3 concentration was tested using Pearson correlation. The comparison result of CA15-3 concentration in saliva and serum level in cases and controls was not statistically significant (p>0.05). However, the correlation between salivary and serum CA 15-3 concentration was positive and statistically significant (r=0.27, p=0.03). In conclusion, the positive correlation between salivary and serum expression found in our study suggests that saliva could be an alternative to blood sampling to help breast cancer monitoring.

Saliva-Exosomics in Cancer: Molecular Characterization of Cancer-Derived Exosomes in Saliva

“…Significantly elevated EGF [85], c-erbB-2 [86,87], and CA15–3 [87] were identified in the saliva of breast cancer patients compared to noncancer groups. There was a significant positive correlation between serum and saliva CA15–3 level, indicating the potential of saliva as a diagnostic body fluid for breast cancer [98,99]. While serum CA15–3 is now an FDA-approved biomarker for monitoring the metastasis of breast cancer [100], salivary CA15–3 has not been cleared for this application by FDA.…”

Salivary biomarkers in cancer detection

“…Salivary and serum level of concentrations of protein CA15-3 could be positively correlated when comparing breast cancer patients to controls [42, 64]. CA15-3 now is a proteomic biomarker approved by US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for monitoring the metastasis of breast cancer [65].…”

Highly sensitive and robust peroxidase-like activity of porous nanorods of ceria and their application for breast cancer detection

“…In 2012 breast cancer resulted in 1.68 million cases and 522,000 deaths [55]. Herein, peroxidase-like activity of PN-Ceria was also tested in a traditional ELISA technique to quantificationally detect CA15-3, a well-known breast cancer biomarker [56].…”