Systematic Review: Serum Autoantibodies in the Early Detection of Gastric Cancer

Antibodies against tumor-associated antigens have been found in serum of patients with various types of cancers and may serve as biomarkers for early detection of gastric cancer as well. This systematic review aims to give an overview about known autoantibodies and their diagnostic value in gastric cancer. We conducted a systematic literature search in two databases to identify studies which performed serological testing for autoantibodies in gastric cancer patients and controls. Data on study characteristics and results were extracted independently by two reviewers. Overall, 39 articles reporting the detection of 34 different autoantibodies met the inclusion criteria for this review. The most common antibody detection method was enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and the most frequently assessed autoantibody was anti-p53, which was tested in 13 studies. Most antibodies were assessed in only one study and only few authors have evaluated the diagnostic value of combinations of multiple autoantibodies. For single autoantibodies, specificity was generally very high (median: 99.15%), but sensitivity was mostly rather low (median: 12.35%). For some autoantibody combinations, substantially higher sensitivity at reasonably high levels of specificity could be achieved. Development of extended and optimized multimarker panels of autoantibodies might be a promising approach for gastric cancer early detection.