Objective：To assess the clinical value of macrophage inhibitory cytokine-1 (MIC-1) as a serum tumor marker for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
Methods：Serum MIC-1 levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in 35 patients with pancreatic cancer, 30 patients with benign pancreatic disease and 30 healthy control subjects. Meanwhile, the results of MIC-1 were compared with that of CA19-9.
Results：The serum MIC-1 level in patients with pancreatic carcer［(1 589.8±838.5) pg/mL］ was significantly higher than that in patients with benign pancreatic diseases ［(400.6±104.3) pg/mL］ or healthy subjects ［(386.1±145.5) pg/mL］ (both P<0.01), while MIC-1 levels exhibited no significant difference between the patients with benign pancreatic diseases and the healthy subjects (P>0.05). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic curve of MIC-1 measurement for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer were 85.7%, 93.3%, 93.8%, 84.9% and 0.973, respectively, which were all higher than those of the corresponding values of CA19-9 (74.3%, 90.0%, 89.6%, 75.0% and 0.862, respectively). The sensitivity and specificity of combined measurement of MIC-1 and CA19-9 was 91.4% and 83.3%, respectively. The positive rate of MIC-1 was significantly lower than that of CA19-9 in patients with benign pancreatic diseases (3.3% vs. 26.7%, P<0.05). The positive rate of CA19-9 in patients with benign pancreatic diseases complicated by jaundice was significantly higher than that patients without jaundice (55.6% vs. 14.3%, P<0.05), while whether complicated by jaundice or not, it had no influence on the positive rate of MIC-1 (P>0.05).
Conclusions：The comprehensive diagnostic ability of MIC-1 is better than CA19-9 for diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and MIC-1 may potentially be a novel serum tumor marker of pancreatic cancer.