[Various acute phase reactants in different types of proliferative diseases of the uterine appendages]

The authors examined serum in patients with ovarian cancer (OC; a disseminated process), ovarian cystadenoma (OCA), or external endometriosis (EM) before treatment and in apparently healthy females (a control) for the content of some acute-phase proteins and cytokines to clarify the specific features of changes in their concentrations in relation to the type of the proliferative process. It was shown that in OC, there were significant reductions in the levels of alpha2-macroglobulin (MG), plasmin (PL), alpha1-antitrypsin (AT) and statistically significantly increases in the content of lactoferrin (LF), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8, Ig, and the regulatory transport complex of P--M. In M, the concentrations of AT were lower and those of IL-6, IL-8, and PL-MG were higher (to a lesser degree than those in OC). In OCA, the levels of MG and IgA were increased; those of IL-8 and PL-MG were decreased. The concentrations of interferon and IgM were unchanged in all groups. The findings suggest that difefrent proliferative processes initially provoke a number of changes of varying magnitude and even directions in the serum levels of inflammation reactants, which should be borne in mind when conducting clinical tests in the intraoperative and, probably, postoperative periods.