Could alpha-L-fucosidase be useful as a diagnostic and stage discriminative factor for lung cancer?

Objective: To investigate the relationship between clinicopathological variables of patients with lung cancer and Alpha-L-fucosidase (AFU) serum levels and to examine AFU usability in distinguishing between early-stage and advanced-stage lung cancer. Design: This was a prospective observational study. Setting: Van Yuzuncu Yil University Department of Thoracic Surgery, between June 2020 and December 2020. Subjects: Fifty healthy volunteers as the control group and seventy-five lung cancer patients confirmed and staged by imaging methods. Interventions: The patients’ demographic (age, gender) and clinicopathological characteristics were determined by physical examination, biochemical tests, pathological examination and imaging studies. The TNM staging system is used in cancer staging. Main outcome measures: Serum AFU levels were measured in both the control and lung cancer groups. Results: The mean AFU level of lung cancer patients was 13.35 ± 0.61 ng/mL, while the mean AFU level of the control group was 1.86 ± 0.35 ng/mL (P<0.001). AFU levels were significantly higher in the lung cancer group with increasing depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis and TNM stages (P<0.001). Conclusions: This study is the first to show that AFU can detect lung cancer early and predict the cancer stage. AFU can be an essential diagnostic and stage discriminative marker for lung cancer.