Thermal coagulation of serum proteins in cancer, in the postoperative phase of surgery, and in the administration of adrenocorticotropic hormone

An Evaluation of Some Biochemical Tests for Cancer

“…33 The results of this investigation show some of the weaknesses of biochemical tests that have been advocated as diagnostic aids in neoplasia. They agree substantially with others which appeared during the present work (Huggins, Miller and Jensen, 1949;Huggins, Cleveland and Jensen, 1950;Jackson, 1950;Pollak and Leonard, 1950;Duboff, 1950;Bodansky and McInnes, 1950;Homberger, Pfeiffer, Page, Rizzoni and Benotti, 1950;Winzler and Smyth, 1948;Kelley, Good and McQuarrie, 1950;Gilligan, Rothwell and Warren, 1950;Finnegan, Brockland, Meuther, Hawk, Inkley and Thoma, 1950). The heat coagulation, iodoacetate and mucoprotein tests, which were studied in this work, are not sufficiently sensitive to detect incipient tumours, are not sufficiently reliable to exclude or to confirm a diagnosis, and generally speaking, their response is not proportional to the severity of the disease.…”

“…How far these changes represent BIOCHEMICAL TESTS FOR CANCER a general response of the body to disease or one peculiar to one disease, is still to be decided. Of the tests which have been described, the positive response of the iodoacetate test has been attributed to changes in the molecules of protein produced by the body in repsonse to stress of illness (Bodansky and McInnes, 1950).…”

Evaluation of diagnostic tests for cancer.III. Inhibition of thermal coagulation of serum by iodoacetic acid (the Huggins-Miller-Jensen test)

“…1 Under these conditions, the results of tests done on one and the same sample of serum rvere reproducible on the same day. It was found that allowing serum to stand in the ice-box for more than twenty-four hours tended to vitiate results, since there was lesser coagulability.…”

“…The clinical evaluation showed that 2 1 An inspection of this summary indicates that the new test has markedly reduced the proportion of false positives at the expense of a smaller increase in the proportion of false negatives. I n this case, there is enough of a contrast between the results obtained with the two tests to reject the supposition that it is the result of sampling fluctuations.…”