The potential efficacy of YKL-40 and GP 73 as biomarkers in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

The current study was designed to assess the diagnostic value of YKL-40 and Golgiprotein73 (GP 73) in patients with different liver diseases, and to evaluate the correlations between YKL-40 and GP 73 and other serummarkersalpha-fetoprotein (FP). Beside the evaluation of the role of combined detection of serum biomarkers in high-risk population in an attempt to justify the new, sensitive, specific and rapid measure for the diagnosis and detection of Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Serum YKL-40, GP73 and AFP were compared in a total of 60 human subjects in this study, including 20 healthy adults, and 40 patients with HCC, The main outcome measures were the specificity and sensitivity of YKL-40 and GP73 in patients at risk for the development of HCC.

Using 4.4 relative units as a cut-off value, the sensitivity and specificity of serum GP73 for HCC were 85% and 90% compared with 77% and 60% for YK-L40 using 21.06 ng/ml as a cut-off value. On the same context, the sensitivity and specificity of serum AFP at 8.5ng/ml cut-off were 82% and 95% while that for the AFP and GP73 combined detection was up to 95% and 98%, justifying that the combined detection could prevent the false negative diagnosis by any marker alone and significantly improve the detection rate of HCC.

The current evidence indicates that serum GP73 has a comparable accuracy to AFP for the diagnosis of HCC. Also, Clinical implementation of serum GP73 measurement as a standard test for HCC is recommended alone or in combination with AFP.