Deterministic Role of CEA and MSI Status in Predicting Outcome of CRC Patients: a Perspective Study Amongst Hospital Attending Eastern Indian Populations

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is an important deterministic factor in predicting colorectal carcinoma (CRC) progression. It is also evident that microsatellite instability (MSI) which results in a hypermutable phenotype of genomic DNA is common in CRC. Owing to the scarcity of reports from India, our aim of this study was to understand the clinicopathological correlations of CEA status with surgery and chemotherapy, correlate the same with socio-demographic status of the patients, determine the MSI status amongst them and understand the prognostic implications of CEA and MSI as CRC progression marker amongst patients. The serum CEA level was estimated by chemiluminescence assay (CLIA). Serum liver enzyme assay was carried out following the manufacturer’s instructions using auto-analysers (E. Merck and Sera mol. Health Care, India). MSI analysis was carried out by PCR-SSCP. From our study, most frequently detected colorectal cancer was in 40–49 years age group (25.26%) with 61.05% male and 38.95% females. CEA showed a significant association with higher TNM staging, tumour size, smoking habit and MSI status (p < 0.05) but not with sex and site of cancer (p > 0.05). After surgery and chemotherapy, CEA and WBCs were decreased significantly (p < 0.05), while liver enzymes did not change significantly (p > 0.05). Overall, microsatellite instability was observed in approximately 40% of the populations. From our study, it was also evident that for both, MSI and abnormal CEA level predicted poor prognosis for the patient (by using Kaplan-Meier survival analysis; p = 0.04). Thus, CEA and initial MSI status can be used as prognostic markers of CRC.