Clinical utility of serum fucosylated hemopexin in Japanese patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.
OBJECTIVE
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common clinical problem all over the world. Fucosylated hemopexin (Fuc-Hpx) is a newly reported glycoprotein for the diagnosis of HCC, however, its clinical implications are unclear. The aim of this study was to elucidate the clinical utility of Fuc-Hpx in Japanese patients with HCC.


METHODS
The sera from 331 HCC patients, 45 with liver cirrhosis (LC), 85 with chronic hepatitis (CH) and 22 healthy people were examined for the expression of Fuc-Hpx; the level was compared with clinical parameters as well as hemopexin (Hpx) expression. The expressions of Fuc-Hpx in 12 HCC tissues and corresponding adjacent non-cancerous liver tissues were also examined.


RESULTS
No correlation was observed between Hpx and Fuc-Hpx level. The median Fuc-Hpx levels in healthy people and CH, LC and HCC patients were 3.8, 3.7, 6.1 and 7.6 AU/mL, respectively (CH vs LC, P = 0.002; CH vs HCC, P < 0.001; LC vs HCC, P = 0.02). Multivariate analysis revealed that low albumin, low prothrombin time and the presence of HCC were significantly correlated with high Fuc-Hpx (P = 0.013, =0.001 and <0.001, respectively). Among the HCC patients, albumin was correlated with high Fuc-Hpx; however, none of the tumor factors, such as tumor size, tumor number and tumor stage, was correlated with Fuc-Hpx level. The expression of Fuc-Hpx in cancer tissue was not different from that in non-cancerous tissue.


CONCLUSIONS
Fuc-Hpx is a valuable biomarker for HCC but it might be a marker for hypercarcinogenic liver rather than a marker for tumor-bearing liver.
Departments of Gastroenterology and Hepatology             Molecular Hepatology, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Okayama, Japan.
Sayo
S
Kobayashi
Kazuhiro
K
Nouso
Hideaki
H
Kinugasa
Yasuto
Y
Takeuchi
Takeshi
T
Tomoda
Koji
K
Miyahara
Hiroaki
H
Hagihara
Kenji
K
Kuwaki
Hideki
H
Onishi
Shinichiro
S
Nakamura
Fusao
F
Ikeda
Yasuhiro
Y
Miyake
Hidenori
H
Shiraha
Akinobu
A
Takaki
Kazuhide
K
Yamamoto