Biochemical methods
are particularly important in the clinics, mainly
due to their ease of performance and also for the
better management of patient care (e.g. cancer cases)
through determination of apoptosis; albeit not yet routinely
applied. Among the potential biomarkers of
apoptosis, cytokeratins and DNA nucleosomes [23]
are especially of importance. Both of them are easily
measured by ELISA, which is a common technique
in most of the routine clinical chemistry laboratories.
Furthermore, plasma total cytokeratin 18 level
was reported to be a strong prognostic marker in
non-small cell lung cancer patients (CI: 0.50-0.82,
p=0004) [24].