Diagnostic Significance of Combined Detection of Epstein-Barr Virus Antibodies, VCA/IgA, EA/IgA, Rta/IgG and EBNA1/IgA for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Abstract

The objective of this study was to investigate the diagnostic significance of EBV antibody combined detectionfor nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) in a high incidence region of southern China. Two hundred and elevenuntreated NPC patients, 203 non-NPC ENT patients, and 210 healthy controls were recruited for the study. Thetiters of VCA/IgA and EA/IgA were assessed by immunoenzyme assay, and the levels of Rta/IgG and EBNA1/IgAwere determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The levels of VCA/IgA, EA/IgA, Rta/IgG and EBNA1/IgA demonstrated no association with gender or age (p>0.05). The receiver operating characteristic curve andthe area under the curve were used to evaluate the diagnostic value. The sensitivity of VCA/IgA (98.1%) andthe specificity of EA/IgA (98.5%) were the highest. When a logistic regression model was used to combine theresults from multiple antibodies to increase the accuracy, the combination of VCA/IgA+Rta/IgG, whose areaunder the curve was 0.99, had the highest diagnostic efficiency, and its sensitivity, specificity and Youden indexwere 94.8%, 98.0% and 0.93 respectively. The data suggest that the combination of VCA/IgA+Rta/IgG may bemost suitable for NPC serodiagnosis.