Clinical value of mesothelin in pleural effusions versus histology by medical thoracoscopy: brief report

The aim of this study based on the third phase of the architecture of diagnostic research was to assess the sensitivity and specificity of soluble mesothelin-related peptide (SMRP) in pleural exudative effusions (PE) compared to the histology obtained by medical thoracoscopy as the diagnostic gold standard examination. We assessed 104 consecutive thoracoscopies. SMRP concentrations were obtained using an ELISA test. We had 34 mesotheliomas (25 epithelioid and 9 sarcomatoid), 35 pleural metastases, and 35 benign diseases. PE-SMRP were significantly higher in patients with epitheliomorphic mesothelioma (mean ± SD 46.55 ± 44.29 nM) than in patients with sarcomatoid mesothelioma (16.11 ± 25.02 nM; p = 0.061), pleural metastasis (7.52 ± 10.77 nM; p < 0.0001), or benign diseases (5.82 ± 8.86 nM; p < 0.0001). Using ROC curve analysis, PE-SMRP offered an AUC of 0.767 in its ability to differentiate between patients with mesothelioma and all other diagnoses. The diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of PE-SMRP for distinguishing mesothelioma from all other causes of pleural effusion, at a cut-off value of 19.6 nM, were 58.8 and 97.1 %, respectively. PE-SMRP higher than the assumed cut-off of 19.6 nM were observed in 18/25 (72.0 %) epitheliomorphic mesotheliomas, 2/9 (22.2 %) sarcomatoid mesotheliomas, 5/35 (14.3 %) pleural metastases, and 1/35 (2.9 %) benign diseases. We conclude that PE-SMRP adds some clinical information in the work-up of patients with a PE of unknown origin: (1) thoracoscopy should always be done in patients with a positive mesothelin; (2) a negative mesothelin does not exclude a malignant disease.