Klin Onkol 1999; 12(4): 133-135.
Summary: Background: Thymidine kinase (TK catalyses the phosphorylation of thymide monophosphate (TMP) in (the presence of adenosine triphosphate . TMP is transformed to triphosphate and then is incorporated into DNA. TK has thus been designated as a salvage enzyme of DNA synthesis. TK values in serum are considered to be a marker of cell proliferation. Patients with nonHodgkin's lymphomas are routinely monitored by serum TK to evaluate the therapeutic effect or in effort to detect disease progression.
Design and Subjects: TK serum values were examined in 39 patients with recently determined diagnosis of nonHodgkin‘s lymphoma to ascertain the correlation between initial level of serum TK and clinical stage of disease, histological type and presence of B symptoms. b>Methods and Results: TK levels in serum were assayed by radioenzymatic method (lmmunotech, CR). For statistic evaluation, the method of variance analysis for variable pretreatment serum TK levels classified by clinical stage or by other parameters was used. The method did not identify any correlation between the initial serum TK values and histological type or presence of B symptoms, but the relationship to the clinical stage of disease was evident (p< 0.086). Conclusions: We found a correlation of elevated pretreatment serum level of thymidine kinase in patients with nonHodgkin‘s lymphoma and advanced clinical stage of disease.
