evaluation of l-fucose and sialic acid levels in patients with colorectal cancer and control subject

Background: currently, glycans, which are known as functional molecules in the biological system, are being under study as potential cancer markers. this study aimed to determine the level of serum lfucose and sialic acid as the biomarkers in patients with colorectal cancer (crc). materials and methods: the patients with crc (n=40, 20 men and 20 women) participated in the present study. the spectrophotometric method was used to measure the levels of lfucose and sialic acid in the serum of the patients. spss (version 21) was used to analyze the obtained data. the results were expressed as mean ± sd. results: the mean ± sd lfucose level in patients with crc was 27.46 ± 4.8 ng/ml, which was more than this level in the healthy control group (18.64 ±3.1 ng/ml). also, the mean ± sd serum concentration of sialic acid in patients with crc was 2.1 ± 0.41 ng/ml, which was more than the mean ± sd sialic acid level of 1.23 ±0.21 ng/ml in the healthy controls. conclusion: serum concentration of lfucose and sialic acid increased significantly (p < 0.05) in patients with crc compared with the healthy controls. we believe that determining serum lfucose and sialic acid levels could be useful for the detection of crc patients in the early stage.