Diagnostic accuracy of NMP-52, NMP-22 and urine cytology in the diagnosis of bladder cancer

Bladder cancer (BC) is the most important tumor problem of urologic cancer. Therefore, noninvasive urinary biomarkers were used for diagnosis of BC. However, the new biomarkers failed to reach higher accuracy. The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic efficacy of nuclear matrix protein-22 (NMP- 22), nuclear matrix protein-52 (NMP-52), urinary cytology and to investigate combinations of urine NMP-52 with urinary cytology as noninvasive biomarkers to increase diagnostic performance of bladder cancer at different grades and stages. Overall, there were 156 subjects (62 BC, 54 cystitis patients and 40 healthy volunteers). The NMP-22 and NMP-52 were quantified in urine samples by ELISA. The urinary cytology is used by some physicians routinely for diagnosis of BC. The sensitivity and specificity for NMP-52 were 94% and 82%, for NMP-22 69% and 80.8% and for cytology 56% and 94.6% respectively and also, both urinary NMP-22 and NMP-52 have extremely significant relation (p<0.0001) to BC vs. healthy individuals and cystitis patients. Moreover, the combination of NMP- 52 with urinary cytology could predict all BC stages and grade with 95.6% sensitivity and 94.3% specificity. In conclusion, NMP-52 and urinary cytology in combination improve diagnostic performance for BC detection in different pathological types.