Asbestos exposure and serum osteopontin

Our plain-English summary of Asbestos exposure and serum osteopontin, by A.W. O'Regan, D. Serlin, J.S. Berman (The New England Journal of Medicine, 2006).

The study

• Authors: A.W. O'Regan, D. Serlin, J.S. Berman
• Journal: The New England Journal of Medicine
• Published: 2006;354(3):304-5; author reply 304-5
• Type of article: Comment, Letter
• Cited by: 9 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

Summary of the article

This item is published correspondence about a study by Pass et al. on serum osteopontin levels in asbestos-exposed workers and in patients with pleural mesothelioma. O'Regan, Serlin and Berman questioned osteopontin's usefulness as a tumor marker. They noted that osteopontin is expressed in numerous benign inflammatory and fibrotic lung diseases. They also noted that levels similar to those seen with lung carcinoma occur in tuberculosis, interstitial lung diseases and cardiac disease, which pose diagnostic difficulties in patients with asbestos-related pleural disease. They suggested that future studies might define osteopontin variants with higher diagnostic potential, but concluded that until then its specificity was too low for use as a screening tool for mesothelioma. In an accompanying letter, Hiraki, Aoe and Ueoka reported pleural-fluid osteopontin in 9 patients with pleural mesothelioma and 27 with various nonmalignant diseases. Mean levels were 22,692 versus 9575 ng per milliliter (P<0.001), and the area under the ROC curve was 0.885. At a cutoff of 11,436 ng per milliliter, sensitivity was 100 percent and specificity 77.8 percent. In reply, Pass and colleagues stressed studying an appropriate high-risk asbestos-exposed cohort prospectively. They said a National Cancer Institute validation study would address specificity, and that the Hiraki data needed comparison with effusions from asbestos-exposed people without cancer.

PubMed has no abstract for this study, and the article doesn't print one. We wrote this summary from the full article with the help of AI. It is not the authors' wording.

In plain English

This item is a letter to the editor, published with a reply from the authors of the study it discussed. The letter presented no new data. Its authors responded to a 2005 report by Pass and colleagues. That report said that raised blood (serum) levels of a protein called osteopontin, in asbestos-exposed workers with pleural disease, support a diagnosis of mesothelioma. Citing earlier published work, the letter's authors noted that osteopontin is also produced in benign inflammatory and scarring (fibrotic) lung diseases. They added that osteopontin levels similar to those associated with lung carcinoma are also seen in tuberculosis, interstitial lung diseases and cardiac (heart) disease. They suggested that future studies might identify particular forms of osteopontin with higher diagnostic potential. The authors concluded that, until then, osteopontin measurement is not specific enough to be used as a screening tool for mesothelioma. In reply, Pass and colleagues stated that in their report the degree of osteopontin elevation in asbestos-exposed subjects depended on the presence of fibrosis and plaque. They also said a planned validation study by the National Cancer Institute's Early Detection Research Network would address the specificity concerns.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: letter to the editor (correspondence) commenting on a published study, with a reply from that study's authors; no new data
• Who was studied: No population was studied in the letter. It comments on Pass et al.'s report on workers with pleural disease who had been exposed to asbestos.
• Exposure: Asbestos exposure in general; no fiber types, products or doses are named
• Main results:
  • Citing other published work (not new data), the letter's authors stated that osteopontin levels similar to those seen with lung carcinoma also occur in tuberculosis, interstitial lung diseases and cardiac disease
  • The letter's authors suggested that future studies may identify forms (variants) of osteopontin with higher diagnostic potential
  • In their reply, Pass and colleagues stated that in their report the degree of osteopontin elevation in asbestos-exposed subjects depended on the presence of fibrosis and plaque
  • In their reply, Pass and colleagues stated that a validation study by the Early Detection Research Network of the National Cancer Institute would address the specificity issues raised in the letter
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that the specificity of osteopontin measurement is too low for it to be used as a screening tool for mesothelioma, and that measuring it is unlikely to help diagnosis in patients with asbestos-related pleural disease

Topics

The National Library of Medicine indexes this study under subjects our site covers: Mesothelioma.

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Asbestos Exposure, Osteopontin, Pleural Mesothelioma, Tumor Marker, Carcinoma, Interstitial Lung Disease, Asbestos-Related Pleural Disease, Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Asbestos exposure, pleural mesothelioma, and serum osteopontin levels — H.I. Pass, D. Lott, et al. (2005)
• Serum osteopontin levels--is it time to screen asbestos-exposed workers for pleural mesothelioma? — M.R. Cullen (2005)
• Plasma osteopontin levels in patients with head and neck cancer and cervix cancer are critically dependent on the choice of ELISA system — D. Vordermark, H.M. Said, et al. (2006)
• Soluble mesothelin-related peptides in the diagnosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma — A. Scherpereel, B. Grigoriu, et al. (2006)
• Utility of osteopontin and serum mesothelin in malignant pleural mesothelioma diagnosis and prognosis assessment — B.D. Grigoriu, A. Scherpereel, et al. (2007)
• Comparison of osteopontin, megakaryocyte potentiating factor, and mesothelin proteins as markers in the serum of patients with malignant mesothelioma — J. Creaney, D. Yeoman, et al. (2008)

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