Serum CA-125 level in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with and without pulmonary hypertension.

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive and debilitating disease and is going to be the 3rd most common cause of death worldwide. Pulmonary hypertension (PH) has severely bad influence on prognosis in COPD patients. Hence, early diagnosis of it is important for appropriate therapy. Echocardiography is used for this purpose, which requires cardiologist and expensive equipment which may not be available anywhere. CA-125, a biomarker of ovarian cancer, has shown to be associated with left ventricular failure. We aimed to show the relationship between CA-125 levels and PH in patients with COPD.

Methods: Ninety patients with stable COPD were enrolled into the study. Levels of CA-725 were measured from venous blood, and in the same day systolic pulmonary artery pressure (sPAP) was measured by transthoracic echocardiography.

Results: Of 90 Patients 57 had PH and 39 had not. Patients with PH had significantly higher CA- 125 levels compared with controls (mean 39.15 U/ mL vs. 24.22 U/mL, P < 0.04). Levels of CA-125 were correlated with sPAP (r=017, P=0.01).

Conclusions: The CA-125 biomarker can be used to identify COPD patients with pulmonary hypertension. Since it is cheap and easily available it can help in centers with less access to echocardiography.