Combination of urinary fibrinogen β-chain and tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins for the detection of bladder cancer

Aim: to evaluate the performance of urinary fibrinogen β-chain (FBC) - either alone or associated with urinary tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins (UPY) - as bladder cancer (BCa) diagnostic biomarker. Materials & methods: 164 subjects were tested. Results: significantly different FBC and UPY levels were found between BCa patients and controls, as well as between low-grade and high-grade cancers. The diagnostic accuracy was 0.84 for FBC and 0.87 for UPY. The combination of FBC and UPY improved the accuracy to 0.91. The addition of clinical variables (age, gender, and smoking habit) to FBC and UPY into a model for BCa prediction significantly improved the accuracy to 0.99. The combination of FBC and UPY adjusted for clinical variables associates with the highest sensitivity and good specificity. Conclusion: urinary FBC and UPY could be used as biomarkers for BCa diagnosis. Lay abstract: This research has developed and validated a highly accurate predictive model for BCa diagnosis based on the combination of two urinary biomarkers, fibrinogen γ-chain (FBC), and urinary tyrosine-phosphorylated proteins (UPY), and some clinical variables (age, gender and smoking habit). If the preliminary promising results will be confirmed by external validations and prospective trials in selected clinical scenarios, our model could be transferred to clinical practice for screening of high-risk population.