Serum TK1 is a more reliable marker than CEA and AFP for cancer screening in a study of 56,286 people

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that the number of cancer patients will increase by about 70% during the next 25 years world-wide. To deal with this problem, WHO has suggested a focus on prevention of tumor incidence and health screening for early detection of people with tumors. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the use of thymidine kinase 1 (TK1), CEA and AFP in serum to discover people with malignant tumors through health cancer screening. METHODS: Of a cohort in 486,085 people of a routine health screening at the Health Centre, Fujun 180 Hospital, Quanzhou city, China, 56,286 people were investigated according to the presence of cancer during 2009-2014. The concentration of CEA and AFP were determined by an electrochemiluminescence immunoassay from Roche Diagnostics e601GmbH and STK1 by a commercial kit based on an enhanced chemiluminescent dot blot assay. RESULTS: The cancer incident rate increased from 0.048/100,000 to 0.220/100,000. The most common types of tumors were those of the liver, cervix and lung. STK1 correlated to tumor growth rate, was more sensitive than CEA and AFP for discovering people with malignant tumors and more sensitive among people who had diagnosis of malignant tumor. STK1 was also a prognostic biomarker for death at 10-40 months follow-up, while CEA and AFP were not. A combination of these markers increased the sensitivity by about 30%. CONCLUSION: STK1 is a reliable biomarker for discovering people with malignant tumors in cancer screening.