Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR) spectra of the serum specimens from patients with malignant tumors were compared with those from presumably healthy persons. We found that 87% of serum specimens from the patients yielded a common proton signal, which was ascribed to the methyl protons of lactic acid; whereas only 9% of serum specimens from the healthy persons tested gave this signal. On the basis of these results we concluded that the lactate level in the serum can be used as a criterion for the diagnosis of cancer in humans and that the determination of lactate concentration in the serum is easily performed by means of 1H-NMR.
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Ohsaka et al. (1979) studied this question.
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