الفهرس 
Introduction and Aim of the WorkOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major health problem with doubling in incidence rates in Egypt in the past 10 years.It represents the most common primary malignant tumor of the liver and one of the major causes of death.Early detection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma enhances effective and curative management.
Glypican 3 is an oncofetal protein that only detected in HCC not in normal liver,while VEGF is one of the most important angiogenesis regulators and its overexpression has been reported in HCC.
Aim of the study:is to assess the clinical utility of serum GPC3 and VEGF for the diagnosis of HCC.
Patients and Methods:this study included 40 patients with HCC, 40 patients with Liver Cirrhosis as benign control group and 10 apparently healthy volunteers as normal controls.
All cases were subjected to routine laboratory investigations, measurement of serum GPC3 and VEGF using ELISA, in addition GPC3 and VEGF mRNAs using RT-PCR, in peripheral blood samples.
Results: We found that GPC3 level in the serum of patients with HCC was significantly higher than in normal controls (mean level was 24.03ng/ml in HCC versus 3.2ng/ml in controls), which indicates that serum GPC3 was able to distinguish patients with HCC from normal controls.
However, we also observed a significant elevation in serum GPC3 in patients with liver cirrhosis compared to normal controls (mean level was (24.3 ng/ml in cirrhosis versus 3.2 ng/ml in controls).
However, no difference was observed in the serum GPC3 levels between patients with HCC and liver cirrhosis.
The sensitivity and specificity of applied techniques for GPC3 in HCC serum were 75.64% and 84.31% respectively by ELISA technique, while they were 76.92% and 72.33% respectively by RT-PCR technique.
Serum VEGF level in the HCC group (mean level 194 pg/ml) was higher than that of the Liver Cirrhosis group (mean level 173.5 pg/ml), and both groups had a significantly higher serum VEGF level compared to the control group (mean level 17.2 pg/ml).
The sensitivity and specificity of VEGF in serum for HCC were 89.51% and 80.00%, respectively by ELISA technique, and were 78.95% and 78.57% respectively, by RT-PCR technique.
Conclusion: GPC3 is not a promising serum marker for diagnosis of HCC especially for patients with history of liver cirrhosis,while VEGF could be a potential serum biomarker for HCC.
Both techniques used for detection of GPC3 and VEGF proteins and their expression as mRNA were highly sensitive and specific.