Diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in early-stage, to give an effective treatment option and improve quality of life for cancer patients, is an important medical mission globally. Combination of AFP with some biomarkers may be more supportive in both diagnosis and screening of HCC, but the range value of these markers can be applied as daily markers were unclearly. In some studies, human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT mRNA) was reported as an advantage marker to diagnose cancer. The present study identified serum of 340 patients that were infected chronic hepatitis B virus or hepatitis C virus and divided in 2 groups including Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and liver cirrhosis (LC) to measure their values of hTERT mRNA, AFP, AFP-L3%, and DCP, as well as combination of them. As a result, the concentration of hTERT mRNA, AFP, AFP-L3%, and DCP in HCC groups were significantly higher than that in LC group (P < .01). For detecting HCC, hTERT mRNA had sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 96% (at the cutoff value of 31.5 copies/mL), AFP sensitivity of 73% and specificity of 92% (at the cutoff value of 5.1 ng/mL), AFP-L3% sensitivity of 69% and specificity of 90% (at the cutoff value of 1.05%), DCP sensitivity of 82% and specificity of 92% (at the cutoff value of 29.01 mAU/mL). The largest area under the curve (AUC) of combination hTERT mRNA with DCP was 0.932 (sensitivity of 98.2% and specificity of 88.2%). New combination of DCP with hTERT mRNA gave a useful choice for screening of HCC in chronic HBV or HCV patients associated liver cirrhosis.
Keywords: AFP; AFP-L3%; Des-γ-carboxyprothrombin; hTERT mRNA; hepatocellular carcinoma.
© The Author(s) 2022.