Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Serum thymidine kinase levels linked to lymphoma in cats
By Taylor, Samantha S et al.·Published in Journal of feline medicine and surgery·2013·University of Bristol, United Kingdom·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Serum thymidine kinase activity in clinically healthy and diseased cats: a potential biomarker for lymphoma.
- Species:
- cat
Plain-English summary
A study found that cats with lymphoma had much higher levels of a specific enzyme called serum thymidine kinase (sTK) compared to healthy cats and those with other diseases. In healthy cats, the average sTK level was around 2.2 U/l, while cats with lymphoma had an average of 17.5 U/l. This suggests that measuring sTK could help veterinarians identify lymphoma in cats earlier and potentially improve treatment outcomes. More research is needed to confirm how useful this test could be for predicting the course of the disease.
People also search for: cat lymphoma symptoms · elevated thymidine kinase in cats · cat cancer diagnosis tests
Abstract
The thymidine kinases are enzymes that convert deoxythymidine to deoxythymidine monophosphate and have a function in DNA synthesis. Rapidly proliferating cells will have higher levels of thymidine kinase. Serum thymidine kinase activity (sTK) is a useful tumour marker in humans and dogs, with utility as a prognostic indicator in lymphoma. In the current study serum samples were collected from 49 clinically healthy cats, 33 with lymphoma, 55 with inflammatory disease and 34 with non-haematopoietic neoplasia (NHPN). sTK was measured using a radioenzyme assay and a reference interval (1.96 × SD) was established from the clinically healthy cats (<5.5 U/l). Mean sTK activity for healthy cats was 2.2 U/l (range 0.8-8.4, ± SD 1.7). Mean sTK activity for cats with lymphoma was 17.5 U/l (range 1.0-100.0 SD ± 27.4). Mean sTK activity for cats with NHPN was 4.2 U/l (range 1.0-45.0, SD ± 8.6). Mean sTK activity for the inflammatory group was 3.4 U/l (range 1.0-19.6, SD 3.9). Cats with lymphoma had significantly higher sTK activity than healthy cats or cats with inflammatory disease (P <0.0001) and cats with NHPN (P <0.0002). sTK activity is a potentially useful biomarker for feline lymphoma and further study is required to assess its utility as a prognostic indicator.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23076596/