Healthy living in winter

Carcinoembryonic antigen is a marker to check whether there is some kind of tumor. This is a means of medical examination. So what is the value of carcinoembryonic antigen to be considered cancer? If carcinoembryonic antigen is detected to be high, what kind of diet should be adopted? Let's take a look!

What is carcinoembryonic antigen?

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a proteoglycan complex found in colon cancer, normal fetal intestine, pancreas and liver. It can be widely found in digestive system cancers originating from endoderm leaves, and also in digestive tract tissues of normal embryos, and there are traces in normal human serum.

Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a broad-spectrum tumor marker, which can reflect the existence of various tumors to people, and is a good tumor marker for judging the curative effect, disease development, monitoring and prognosis of colorectal cancer, breast cancer and lung cancer.

However, its specificity and sensitivity are not strong, and its effect on early diagnosis of tumor is not obvious. If the tumor associated with CEA elevation is resected, observing CEA level can be used to detect tumor recurrence.

How much does carcinoembryonic antigen count as cancer?

Embryonic antigen is a kind of protein synthesized by gastrointestinal tract, liver and pancreas during embryonic period.

There is also a small amount of synthesis in the gastrointestinal tract of adults, but it does not enter the blood system but is excreted through the gastrointestinal tract. So there is only a small amount of carcinoembryonic antigen in the serum of normal adults.

In the case of gastrointestinal tumor, the carcinoembryonic antigen in serum will increase obviously, and the carcinoembryonic antigen in serum exceeds 20 micrograms per liter of blood, suggesting that there is gastrointestinal tumor.