ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

Gazzetta Medica Italiana Archivio per le Scienze Mediche 2004 October;163(5):139-44

Copyright © 2004 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Ca 125 blood levels and heart failure: a strong relationship

Varvarigos N. ¹, Kappas A. ¹, Avramopoulou T. H. ¹, Kalogeropoulou K. ², Papaioannou H. A. ¹, Dimakopoulos N. ², Migdalis I. N. ³, Galanis C. ¹, Mortzos G. ²

¹ Department of Cardiology, NIMTS Hospital, Athens, Greece; ² Department of Nuclear, NIMTS Hospital, Athens, Greece; ³ Second Department of Internal Medicine, NIMTS Hospital, Athens, Greece

Aim. CA 125, a wide­ly ­used tu­mor mark­er for ovar­ian can­cer was re­port­ed to be al­so el­e­vat­ed in ­some be­nign con­di­tions. Recently, it has ­been ob­served to be a suc­cess­ful prog­nos­tic fac­tor in ­heart fail­ure pa­tients pre and post­heart trans­plan­ta­tion. Aim of ­this ­study was to ­find if ­there is a re­la­tion­ship ­between CA 125 ­blood lev­els and ­heart func­tion­al stat­us.
Methods. CA 125 ­blood lev­els ­were de­ter­mined in 72 pa­tients (49 men and 23 wom­en, ­aged 72,4±10.85 ­years) ­with ­heart fail­ure. CA 125 nor­mal val­ues ­were 0-35 U/ml. The re­sults ­were ­grouped ac­cord­ing to the clin­i­cal stat­us (New York Heart Association Classificatio, NY­HA) and the ejec­tion frac­tion of the pa­tients, as was de­ter­mined by ­both ra­dio­nu­clide ven­tric­u­log­ra­phy and car­diac ultra­sound, and an­a­lyzed by Pearson Correlation ­test, ANO­VA and χ2 ­test of ­SPSS 8.0 sta­tis­ti­cal pro­gram. The fe­male pa­tients ­with el­e­vat­ed CA 125 lev­els ­were ex­am­ined for ovar­ian can­cer.
Results. CA 125 lev­els ac­cord­ing to NY­HA ­were the fol­low­ing: ­stage 1: 6.4±5.8 (14 pa­tients), ­stage 2: 37.4±32.69 (22 pa­tients), ­stage 3: 108.2±40.27 (21 pa­tients) and ­stage 4: 303.9± 270.9 (15 pa­tients). There ­were 23 fe­male pa­tients ­with el­e­vat­ed CA 125 ­blood lev­els ­which under­went ultra­so­nog­ra­phy or CT-­scan and in all 23 pa­tients ovar­ian can­cer was ex­clud­ed. Statistical anal­y­sis re­vealed a sig­nif­i­cant re­la­tion­ship ­between CA 125 and NY­HA ­stage (p: 0.012). Significant neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tion was al­so ­found ­between CA 125 and ra­dio­nu­clide ejec­tion frac­tion, ­with p-val­ue: 0.002 and Pearson cor­re­la­tion co­ef­fi­cient: -0.642 as ­well as ­between CA 125 and ­echo ejec­tion frac­tion ­with p-val­ue: 0.004 and Pearson cor­re­la­tion co­ef­fi­cient: -0.582 and frac­tion­al short­en­ing (p-val­ue: 0.006 and Pearson cor­re­la­tion co­ef­fi­cient: -0.525).
Conclusion. CA 125, ­besides an ex­cel­lent ovar­ian can­cer mark­er, is al­so a mark­er of ­heart func­tion­al stat­us. The de­ter­mi­na­tion of CA 125 ­blood lev­els may be a use­ful ­tool in ­heart fail­ure man­age­ment.