Background: Ribonucleotide reductase subunit M2 (RRM2) plays a key role in cell and hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication. Nevertheless, its clinical implications for managing liver diseases have been inadequately studied.
Methods: A total of 412 participants were enrolled, including 60 healthy control individuals, 55 patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 173 patients with cirrhosis, and 124 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Serum RRM2 was measured via ELISA.
Results: The level of serum RRM2 in patients with CHB, cirrhosis, and HCC was higher than that in healthy controls (P < .05). A large difference in serum RRM2 was found between HBV-related and non-HBV-related patients in the cirrhosis group (P < .001), compared with the difference between HBV-related HCC and non-HBV-related HCC (P = .86). In the HBV-related cirrhosis group, the serum RRM2 level showed significant positive correlations with HBV DNA, hepatitis B surface antigen, hepatitis B e antigen, Child-Pugh scores, and MELD scores and played a strong role in diagnosing HBV-related cirrhosis in CHB, compared with fibrosis-4 score and aspartate aminotransferase-to-platelet ratio index.
Conclusions: Serum RRM2 is a reliable biomarker for accurate HBV-related cirrhosis diagnosis and evaluation. Also, serum RRM2 could reflect the expression state of HBV replication in patients with HBV-related cirrhosis.
Keywords: chronic liver disease; hepatitis B virus; hepatocellular carcinoma; ribonucleotide reductase; serum ribonucleotide reductase subunit M2 biomarker.
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