Abstract

The objective of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) levels and ovarian malignancies by contrasting a population with ovarian malignancies and a population free of gynecological neoplasms. Two hundred forty four serum samples were obtained from the US National Cancer Institute's Prostate, Lung, Colon, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Project. These samples were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays in duplicate, and on completion of the assays, the samples were decoded for age and disease type. Average VEGF values for the nongynecological control group was 4.399 ng/ml; for benign gynecologic cases, 2.515 ng/ml; and for patients with malignancies, 4.287 ng/ml. Specifically, there was no difference between the mean value of VEGF in patients with ovarian malignancies and the patients with benign gynecological tumors (P = 0.8823). Also, there was no difference between the mean value of VEGF in patients with ovarian malignancies and the control patients who did not have gynecological disease (P = 0.3110). Using the Mann–Whitney U-test, no significant differences were found between the three populations of this study. Based on our data, due to the lack of significant difference in mean serum VEGF values between patients with and without ovarian malignancies, we feel that serum VEGF cannot be used as a possible screening tool for ovarian cancer.