Prevalence of elevated Anti-p53 in Chinese patients with upper gastrointestinal or colorectal cancer

Background The monitoring of anti-p53 auto-antibodies in the peripheral blood has been used in cancer management; however, their clinical significance alone is limited. This pilot study aimed to describe the prevalence of elevated anti-p53 in newly diagnosed or recurrent upper gastrointestinal cancer or colorectal cancer in Chinese subjects. It also evaluated whether the addition of anti-p53 to a set of established tumor markers would allow for the detection of additional cancer cases than when using these markers alone. Methods A total of 573 subjects, including 187 healthy individuals, 169 patients with upper gastrointestinal cancer and 217 patients with colorectal cancer were included in this observational, prospective study. All subjects were required to provide up to 10 mL of blood. The following biomarkers were measured: anti-p53, carcinoembryonic antigen, cancer antigen (CA)19-9, and CA72-4. Results At the cutoff of 0.02 µg/mL, the sensitivity of anti-p53 in early-stage upper gastrointestinal cancer and colorectal cancer was 8.16% and 26.4%, and in late-stage disease was 7.81 and 28.0%, respectively. The specificity of anti-p53 in the healthy cohort at this cutoff was 98.4%. By adding anti-p53 to other tumor markers, the sensitivities were increased by 8.88%–9.47% in upper gastrointestinal cancer, and by 18.06%–25.00% in colorectal cancer; specificities decreased by 1%–2%. Conclusion The addition of anti-p53 to established tumor markers may improve their diagnostic value for patients with colorectal cancer.