Vucetic B et al. - In a study to assess whether melanoma inhibitory activity (MIA) serum level is elevated in pts with metastases or local spreading of malignant melanomas before any symptom of such progression is clinically apparent, it seems that neither the classification by Clarke nor by Breslow could be used to distinguish pts with positive sentinel lymph nodes from those with negative sentinel lymph nodes. MIA serum level seems to be the ideal test for screening the tumor spread to sentinel lymph nodes Methods
MIA serum levels were compared in 2 groups of pts with primary melanoma; those with positive as opposed to those with negative sentinel lymph nodes
MIA serum levels were studied in 2 control groups; pts with dysplastic nevi and pts with basal cell carcinoma
A blood sample was obtained from each pt and MIA levels were assessed using standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay method
Results
Pts with histologically positive sentinel lymph nodes had much higher mean MIA values than any other pt group considered
With mean value of 14.53 ng/ml, it was almost twice as high as mean MIA value in pts with histologically negative sentinel lymph nodes and more than twice as high as the 2 control groups
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