[The clinical efficacy of Bladder Chek NMP22 in urothelial cancer].

The purpose of this study is to investigate the clinical efficacy of a quick test for NMP22 (Nuclear Matrix Protein 22), Bladder Chek NMP22, as a screening test for urothelial cancers. The subjects include 51 cases(43 cases with pathologically confirmed bladder cancer, and 8 cases with upper urothelial cancer). Bladder Chek NMP22 revealed false positive in the urine with more than 1 x 10(5)/microliter of erythrocytes and 1 x 10(3)/microliter of white blood cells. Thus, showing that Bladder Chek NMP22 was not relatively affected by the contaminated erythrocytes and white blood cells, compared with other conventional methods to detect urinary malignant disease. In 51 cases diagnosed of having pathologically urothelial cancers, the sensitivity of Bladder Chek NMP22 was 56.8%. Bladder Chek NMP22 demonstrated more excellent sensitivity than the other methods. The positivity of Grade3 patients was 68.4%, 68.4% and 63.2% by Bladder Chek NMP22, NMP22 ELISA and urinary cytology. In contrast, the positivity rate for the patients with Grade1 stage was 58.3%, 33.3% and 8.3%. There is no significance of positivity rate between each examination in patients with high grade cancer. However Bladder Chek NMP22 demonstrated the higher positivity in patients with low grade cancer. Bladder Chek NMP22 test could be an easy and confidential method to detect urothelial cancers, especially with low grade, as a screening examination.