Original Articles : The clinical significance of Inca serum CA-125 in gynecological diseases

Objective: The goal of this study was to evaluate the level of Inca serum CA-125 of women with gynecologic diseases, including malignant diseases, and to assess the usefulness of these levels in the diagnosis and screening for gynecologic diseases. Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the level of serum CA-125 of 3,920 women who visited the outpatient clinic in Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology or the Health Screening Center of the Kyungpook National University Hospital between January 1999 and December 2007. Among the women, some were diagnosed with gynecologic diseases and others were disease-free, including gynecologic and other diseases. The level of serum CA-125 was measured using enzyme immunoassays. The distribution of serum CA-125 was made into a normal distribution through log substitutions (Inca serum CA-125). Statistical analysis was performed by independent t-tests. Results: Compared with the normal group, pelvic inflammatory diseases (P<0.01), endometriosis without adenomyosis (P<0.01), uterine leiomyomas (P<0.01), adenomyosis (P<0.01), and ovarian cancer (P<0.01) showed a statistically significant increase. The CA-125 level in the group with adenomyosis (P=0.57) did not show any statistically significant difference compared to the ovarian cancer group. As the stage of ovary cancer advanced, the level of Inca serum CA-125 was statistically increased (P-trend=0.0046). Conclusion: The level of Inca serum CA-125 is useful in the diagnosis of ovary cancer and adenomyosis, but not useful in differentiation between the two diseases in this study.