For both CEA and CA 19-9, elevated serum levels were associated with impaired baseline clinical patient characteristics, such as inferior WHO performance status, intact primary tumour, synchronous metastases, elevated ALP level, elevated platelet (>400/nL) and white blood cell (>10/nL) counts and elevated CRP (>10 mg/L) (Supplementary Table 1). This evidence concerns the gene CEACAM5 and neoplasm.