Biochemical Markers in Hodgkin’s Disease and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma

Abstract

It has been known for many years that the concentration of a number of plasma proteins may be subject to acute change, for example, following surgical trauma [6, 7, 26]; hence the term ‘acute phase’ reactant protein (APRP). Many of these proteins are glycoproteins travelling electrophorectically in the α-region and are made in the liver. The biological function of only some of them is fully understood and their metabolism also requires elucidation. All of them are detectable in the plasma of healthy subjects with the notable exception of C-reactive protein, which is usually absent. The study of these proteins, encouraged by improved specificity in measurement, has been extended to a variety of disease states not necessarily limited to acute phenomena. An important observation is that dissociated increases of particular APRPs have a discriminant function; for example, while in neoplastic invasion of the liver, α₁-antitrypsin and α₁-acid glycoprotein are both increased, there is dissociation in hepatitis and cirrhosis [10, 11]. The study of ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease has illustrated the value of studying a protein profile in which as many as eight proteins are estimated [16]. Investigation of protein profiles in various types of malignant disease [2, 4, 5, 15, 17, 18] suggests that they may be of value in several ways: they show promise in terms of the staging of some diseases, they can be of value in the early warning and monitoring of metastatic disease, and they may be able to discriminate between inflammatory/infective and neoplastic processes.