Abstract:

Objective: To investigate the performance of serum fibulin-1 (FBLN1) detection in diagnosis and prognosis prediction of colorectal cancer. Methods: A total of 81 patients with colorectal cancer(CRC group), 50 patients with benign colorectal polyps (polyps group) and 50 healthy individuals (healthy group) were enrolled. Serum levels of FBLN1 were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA), CEA was also measured, and difference between groups was analyzed. Results: Similar to serum CEA, serum levels of FBLN1 were significantly higher in patients with colorectal cancer [(12.98±7.82) ng/mL] than in patients with benign colorectal polyps [(7.54±1.23) ng/mL] (P<0.05) and healthy individuals [(6.89±2.03) ng/mL] (P<0.05), respectively. No significant difference were found in FBLN1 level between patients with benign colorectal polyps and healthy individuals. The serum level of FBLN1 in patients with low differentiated CRC[ (22.23±18.51) ng/mL] was higher than that in patients with medium differentiated CRC [(11.65±13.28) ng/mL] (P<0.05) and patients with high differentiated CRC[(9.12±10.17) ng/mL] (P<0.05), respectively. The serum level of FBLN1 in CRC patients with lymph node metastasis[(15.26±6.98) ng/mL] was higher than that in patients with no lymph node metastasis [(8.58±4.27) ng/mL (P<0.05). The detection of FBLN1 for diagnosing CRC had a greater AUC(0.852) than CEA,with sensitivity of 82.7% and specificity of 90.0%. Conclusions: Serum FBLN1 can serve as a biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis prediction of CRC.

Key words: Colorectal cancer, Fibulin-1, Carcinoembryonic antigen, Tumor marker