Original article

Background: Evaluation of the prognostic significance of a group of tumour markers and their ability to predict re-sponse to chemotherapy may allow better targeting of pallia-tive treatment in advanced colorectal cancer. Patients and methods: Using a prospectively acquired database of 377 patients (pts) with advanced colorectal adenocarcinoma, the prognostic significance of serum CEA (342 pts), 0HCG (203 pts), AFP (208 pts), CA125 (150 pts), CA19-9 (76 pts) as well as C-erb B-2 (197 pts), pHCG (197 pts) immunohistochemistry was investigated. Serum markers were taken prior to 5-FU based chemotherapy and immuno-histochemistry was performed on diagnostic samples. Results: Tumour markers of poor prognostic significance in the univariate analysis were CEA> 5 [ig/1 (p ~ 0.006; median survival (MS) 59 weeks vs. 38 weeks) and CA125> 35 U/ml (p- 0.01; MS 51 weeks vs. 30 weeks). Tumour markers elevated at greater than 10 times the normal value which correlated with a poor prognosis were CEA (p-0.001; MS 47 weeks vs. 35 weeks), Serum 0HCG (p< 0.0001; MS 44 weeks vs. 7 weeks) and CA12