UGP - A tumor marker of gynecologic and breast malignancies? Specificity and sensitivity in pretherapeutic patients and the influence of hormonal substitution on the expression of UGP

Urinary gonadotropin peptide (UGP) is a 10,300 Dalton peptide which is present in the urine of pregnant women, those with trophoblast disease and those with, certain nontrophoblastic malignancies. We examined the efficiency of UGP measurement at differentiating benign from malignant gynecologic and breast diseases. UGP was measured in 1355 spot urine samples from 841 patients (343 samples from 323 healthy women and women with benign gynecologic and breast diseases, 1012 samples from 518 women with gynecologic malignant diseases or breast cancer). Using a cutoff of > 3 fmol UGP/mg urinary creatinine the specificity was 97%. The sensitivity of UGP was calculated from pretherapeutically collected samples (n = 210). The sensitivity of the test for all malignancies was 26% (ovarian malignancy (n = 27) 52%, endometrial cancer (n = 25) 32%, cervical cancer (n = 49) 29%, breast cancer (n = 72) 19%, vulvar cancer and vaginal cancer (n = 12) 17% and for carcinoma in situ of the breast or the cervix (n = 20) 0%). We also found significantly higher UGP values in postmenopausal women than in premenopausal women. Hormonal substitution significantly lowered the UGP values.