Studies on α-fetoprotein

III. An investigation onα-fetoprotein production in gastric cancer with and without liver metastasis

Abstract

Serum α-fetoprotein (AFP) was examined in 14 gastric cancers without hepatic metastasis and 12 gastric cancers with hepatic metastasis. AFP was detected by radioimmunoassay and immunodiffusion methods. Seven cases in 12 patients with gastric cancer with hepatic metastasis were AFP positive, but all of 14 gastric cancers without any metastasis were AFP negative. The AFP levels in 5 of the 7 patients were in the range of 23 to 320 ng per ml, and serum AFP was demonstrated by immunoelectrosyneresis (IES) in the other 2 patients. Histological examination was performed in all of the cases described above and 3 cases of AFP positive gastric cancers with and without hepatic metastasis, which were already reported in another paper.
The histological features of AFP positive gastric cancers were more characteristic than those of AFP negative gastric cancers. Their histological features were adenocarcinomas and had some similarity with a trabecular type of hepatocellular carcinoma.
AFP was detected by Ouchterlony method in the serum from a case of histologically confirmed gastric cancer without hepatic metastasis. In this case AFP was positive in the extract of gastric cancer tissue and in the metastatic foci of the lymphnodes but negative in the extract of the liver tissue. In another case of gastric cancer, AFP was detected in the serum by Ouchterlony method 2.5 months after gastrectomy and the AFP was increased with the development of the hepatic metastasis.
It was suggested by these results that in the cases with AFP positive gastric cancer, AFP might be elevated with increase in the volume of the cancer and metastatic foci, and also the possibility existed that AFP level in the gastric cancer was higher in the cases with liver metastasis than in the cases with metastasis of other organs.