Question About HCG

[DAWN82]

have been wondering about this for a while, does anyone know what normal HCG levels are in a male? are there normal levels? or is it supposed to be at zero?

Also, when ever Brian gets his markers, they always give us the HCG levels, not the AFP levels, they only told us what they were in the beginning. whats the difference between them? and how come they are not giving us both of the counts? i hope this makes sense...


Dawn

[danebert]

HCG can be detected in everybody but the levels are so low in an adult male that the reported value is normally zero. When I was being tested at my local hospital the result always came back at zero. When I was tested an Indiana University it came back as .3 or .2 . I think it all depends on the assay used and the labs defined values. I know that some HCG tests are accurate to .2 while others are accurate to .5 . To answer your second question, If his AFP wasn't elevated to start with, then they may only check it every once in a while. A tumor can secrete afp and hcg or both or neither. It seems as though his tumor only secreted HCG therefore its not necessary to check AFP as it probably wouldn't reveal anything about the progress of his treatment and just end up costing more money.

[Fed]

Danebert is right. Pretty much all of the tumor types may secrete HCG (choriocarcinoma always does; seminoma less frequently than all the rest). AFP is always a hallmark of non-seminoma, with yolk sac tumor being the headliner here.

[mstlyn]

Anthonys HCG was elevated when he was diagnosed and then it normalized after chemo. (embryonal carcinoma must must have been the cause for HGC in his case)

Since completing chemo his HCG is always 0 to less than 1 I think it was less than 2 a couple of times too.

Fed, thanks for confirming what I figured must be the case. After chemo he had residual yolk sac tumor, which is the reason his AFP increased after treatment.

Teratoma was found when he had RPLND too.