Comparison of the Diagnostic Performance of Fibulin-3 and Mesothelin in Patients with Pleural Effusions from Malignant Mesothelioma.

Anticancer Research 2017 March [a href=”https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28314308″>Link]

Battolla E, Canessa PA, Ferro P, Franceschini MC, Fontana V, Dessanti P, Pinelli V, Morabito A, Fedeli F, Pistillo MP5, Roncella S

Abstract

BACKGROUND:
In the literature, there exist conflicting data on the value of fibulin-3 (FBLN3) for the diagnosis of pleural effusion (PE) in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM). Therefore we compared the diagnostic performance of FBLN3 against that of soluble mesothelin-related peptide (SMRP) in a cohort of Italian patients.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
FBLN3 and SMRP were detected in PE from 33 patients with MPM, 64 with pleural benign lesions and 23 with non-MPM pleural metastases using a commercial enzyme-linked-immunosorbent(ELISA)-assay kit according to manufacturers’ instructions.
RESULTS:
Levels of FBLN3 were similar in PE from MPM and PE from other pathologies (geometric mean=68.1 vs. 66.2 ng/ml; p=0.872) in contrast to SMRP levels, which were significantly higher in PE from MPM (geometric mean=14.6 vs. 3.2 nM; p<0.001). Receiver operating characteristic analysis confirmed that SMRP showed a good performance (area under the curve=0.79, p<0.001), whereas FBLN3 was not able to discriminate MPM from other pathologies (area under the curve=0.44, p=0.838). CONCLUSION: FBLN3 detection in PE, in contrast to SMRP detection, is not useful as a biomarker for the diagnosis of PE from MPM.