Background

Autoantibody is an attractive diagnostic approach for early detection of malignant tumors. We performed this study to validate the performance of a panel of 7 tumor autoantibodies (TAAs) (p53, PGP9.5, SOX2, GAGE7, GBU4-5, MAGE A1, CAGE) to aid early diagnosis of lung adenocarcinoma with ground-glass nodules (GGNs) in Chinese population and to find an effective simple blood test which can be used in further assessing the risk of lung cancer being present GGNs.

Methods

A prospective audit was conducted on 592 individuals known to have lung GGNs. We detected TAAs quantitation by ELISA method.

Results

198 were positive detected by autoantibody panel test (186 pulmonary malignant or borderline lung diseases, 12 lung benign GGNs). The sensitivity and specificity of autoantibody assay were 39.6% and 90.2% respectively. In lung invasive adenocarcinoma, the sensitivity of autoantibody assay was 49.4%. When the TAAs were combined with miRNAs panel in patients with GGNs, the sensitive was increased to 50.0%. In GGNs >8 mm patients, the sensitive of the TAAs combined with miRNAs panel was more than 60%.

Conclusion

The greatest impact of using the new TAAs was the highly significant improvement in the sensitivity and specificity of the test in the clinical setting. Our study suggested that the TAAs can be combined with CT imaging to aid diagnosis of lung cancer with GGNs.