Fibulin-3 as a biomarker for pleural mesothelioma

Our plain-English summary of Fibulin-3 as a biomarker for pleural mesothelioma, by K. Lamote, P. Baas, J.P. van Meerbeeck (The New England Journal of Medicine, 2013).

The study

• Authors: K. Lamote, P. Baas, J.P. van Meerbeeck
• Journal: The New England Journal of Medicine
• Published: 2013;368(2):189-90
• Type of article: Letter, Comment
• Cited by: 3 articles, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher

In plain English

This item was a short letter to the editor, not a research study. The authors, from Ghent University Hospital in Belgium and the Netherlands Cancer Institute, commented on an earlier article by Pass et al. That article had reported fibulin-3 as an early diagnostic and prognostic biomarker in malignant pleural mesothelioma. The letter reported no new patients, measurements or numbers. The authors called the work promising and innovative, but wrote that the path from a retrospective association to a validated biomarker is long. They pointed to earlier articles on mesothelin, megakaryocyte potentiating factor and osteopontin as showing the pitfalls of validation. They also pointed to the need to account for confounding variables such as glomerular filtration rate, body-mass index and disease stage. They wrote that the link between fibulin-3's biological role and how malignant pleural mesothelioma develops remained unclear. They added that data were lacking from an unrelated prospective cohort analyzed together with known and new serum biomarkers. The authors concluded that if fibulin-3 proved as good as Pass et al. stated, purely predictive markers in this disease could be explored.

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 previously published study by Pass et al.; no new data
• Who was studied: No population studied; the letter discusses the Pass et al. study of fibulin-3 in malignant pleural mesothelioma
• Main results:
  • The letter's argument (not a study finding): the authors described the Pass et al. work as promising and innovative, but wrote that moving from a retrospective association to a validated biomarker is long and winding
  • The letter's argument: earlier articles on other mesothelioma biomarkers showed the need to account for confounding variables such as glomerular filtration rate, body-mass index and disease stage
  • The letter's argument: the link between fibulin-3's pathophysiological role and how malignant pleural mesothelioma develops remained unclear
  • The letter's argument: data were lacking from an unrelated prospective cohort using a multivariate approach with known and new serum biomarkers
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that if fibulin-3 proves as good as Pass et al. stated, purely predictive markers in this disease can be explored

Topics

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

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Fibulin-3, Biomarker, Pleural Mesothelioma.

Related studies

• Fibulin-3 as a blood and effusion biomarker for pleural mesothelioma — H.I. Pass, S.M. Levin, et al. (2012)
• Plasma Fibulin-3 as a Potential Biomarker for Patients with Asbestos-Related Diseases in the Han Population — Z. Jiang, S. Ying, et al. (2017)
• Fibulin-3 as a biomarker for pleural mesothelioma — H.I. Pass, C. Goparaju (2013)
• Fibulin-3 as a biomarker for pleural mesothelioma — K. Hollevoet, E. Sharon (2013)
• Fibulin-3 as biomarker of malignant mesothelioma — C. Ledda, R. Caltabiano, et al. (2019)
• Comparison of fibulin-3 and mesothelin as markers in malignant mesothelioma — J. Creaney, I.M. Dick, et al. (2014)

Browse more research in The New England Journal of Medicine, or return to medical research.