Evaluation of tumor marker levels in patients with chronic renal failure

Chronic renal failure which has many causes are pathophysiological process that is characterized by irreversible loss of renal function and cause to uremia. In order to prevent lifethreatening, renal replacement therapies such as dialysis or transplantation required to be applied. Hemodialysis is still one of the most common method used for treatment of chronic renal failure in the world. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether increase in some tumor markers in hemodialysis patients with renal failure without malignancy. Serum levels of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), carbohydrate antigen 15-3 (CA 15-3), carbohydrate antigen 125 (CA 125) and ?-fetoprotein (AFP) were measured in 24 hemodialysis patients with renal failure and 24 individuals of healthy control group. According to our results, levels of CEA (p < 0,002) and CA 15-3 (p < 0,04) significantly increased in group of patients with renal failure in comparison with control group but there was no significant difference between patients with renal failure and the control group (p>0.5). Although we detected a positive correlation between results of ure and creatinine, there was no statistically significance between ure, creatinin and the other parameters in correlation analysis. Consequently, we considered that some tumor markers such as CEA, AFP, CA 125, CA 15-3 may increase in hemodialysis patients but this increasing is not diagnostically important for malignancy screening in patients with renal failure.Keywords: Hemodialysis, Chronic renal failure, CEA, AFP, CA 125, CA 15-3.