The high expressed serum soluble neural cell adhesion molecule, a high risk factor indicating hepatic encephalopathy in hepatocelular carcinoma patients.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate whether the expression of serum soluble neural cell adhesion molecule (sNCAM) is associated with hepatic encephalopathy (HE) in hepatocelular carcinoma (HCC) patients.


METHODS
The Oncomine Cancer Microarray database was used to determine the clinical relevance of NCAM expression in different kinds of human cancers. Sera from 75 HCC cases enrolled in this study were assessed for expression of sNCAM by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).


RESULTS
Dependent on the Oncomine Cancer Microarray database analysis, NCAM was down regulated in 10 different kinds of cancer, like bladder cancer, brain and central nervous system cancer, while up-regulated in lung cancer, uterine corpus leiomyoma and sarcoma, compared to normal groups. Puzzlingly, NCAM expression demonstrated no significant difference between normal and HCC groups. However, we found by quantitative ELISA that the level of sNCAM in sera from HCC patients with HE (347.4±151.9 ng/ml) was significantly more up-regulated than that in HCC patients without HE (260.3±104.2 ng/ml), the p-value being 0.008. sNCAM may be an important risk factor of HE in HCC patients, the correlation coefficients was 0.278 (P< 0.05) on rank correlation analysis.


CONCLUSIONS
This study highlights that up-regulated level of serum sNCAM is associated with HE in HCC patients and suggests that the high expression can be used as an indicator.
Liver Cancer Institute, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China E-mail : liu.yinkun@zs-hospital.sh.cn.
Tian-Hua
TH
Liu
Kun
K
Guo
Ri-Qiang
RQ
Liu
Shu
S
Zhang
Zhuo-Hui
ZH
Huang
Yin-Kun
YK
Liu
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D019002:CD56 Antigen / Q000097:blood*; D006528:Carcinoma, Hepatocellular / Q000150:complications*; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006501:Hepatic Encephalopathy / Q000097:blood* / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000150:complications*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D019002:CD56 Antigen; C522918:NCAM1 protein, human