SCC-Ag, CEA and TPA Tumor Markers in Cervical Precancerous Lesions

Cancer of cervix is the third most common cancer and the fourth leading cause of cancer death of women worldwide. It is estimated that cervical cancer contributes to approximately 9% of the total new cancer cases and 8% of the total cancer deaths among women in 2008. However, over 85% of the world’s cervical cancer burden is in developing countries where screening programs are not well established or minimally effective (Jemal et al., 2011). Although, screening programs for detection of cervical cancer precursors using Papanicolaou cytological testing (Pap smear) has shown to be very successful in developed countries, so that effective reduction in the incidence of cervical cancer by 75% to 90% as well as decrease in its related mortality by 50% occurred in industrial world (Wallace et al., 2007; Cuzick et al., 2008). The lack of such appropriate screening programs has led to high burden of cervical cancer in low resource countries (Parkin et al., 2008; Mathew and George 2009) where about 83% of new cases and 85% of cervical cancer deaths are reported from developing world (Porika et al., 2010). The Pap smear results may be influenced by several factors including quality of specimens, technique of