Background: At present, the overall sensitivity and specificity of blood biomarkers are insufficient for a diagnosis of colorectal cancer (CRC).
Methods: We analyzed the serum synaptophysin like 1 (sSYPL1) in controls, adenoma patients, CRC patients, pre- and postoperative CRC patients by ELISA.
Results: The upregulation of SYPL1 was confirmed in CRC tissues at both mRNA and protein levels. Consistently, sSYPL1 was significantly higher in CRC patients than in either controls (t = 14.50, P < 0.0001) or adenoma patients (t = 10.56, P < 0.0001) and was associated with lymph node invasion (χ2 = 4.27, P = 0.039). ROC curves showed that sSYPL1 performed superbly in distinguishing CRC patients from controls (AUC: 0.9481; sensitivity: 86.09%, specificity: 91.01%) and adenoma (AUC: 0.8631; sensitivity: 98.68%, specificity: 78.08%). This performance was much better than that of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) or carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9). Even for patients with low CEA levels (under 5 ng/mL), SYPL1 maintained the same high performance for identification of CRC. Furthermore, sSYPL1 levels declined significantly after radical surgery (t = 5.903, P < 0.0001).
Conclusion: sSYPL1 might be an outstanding marker for CRC diagnosis, especially for patients with low CEA levels.
Keywords: Biomarker; Colorectal cancer; SYPL1; Serum.
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