Serum immune biomarker levels combined with hepatitis B virus infection status predict early recurrence of early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma with microvascular invasion after liver resection

Abstract

Introduction

The tumor immune response plays a vital role in cancer recurrence in patients with malignancies. We aim to clarify the risk factors for early recurrence and investigate the efficacy of blood-based biomarkers to predict the risk of early recurrence in early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with microvascular invasion (MVI) after hepatectomy.

Materials and methods

A total of 101 cases of HCC with MVI who underwent liver resection were enrolled. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify independent risk factors of early recurrence. We calculated the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve to evaluate the performance of the four biomarkers identified as risk factors for early recurrence.

Results

Multiple logistic regression analysis indicated that complement (C)4, cluster of differentiation (CD)4+, immunoglobulin A (IgA), and hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA of greater than 500 IU/mL were correlated with early recurrence of HCC. The area under the curve was greater for the combination model than for the HBV DNA, CD4+, IgA, or C4 models alone.

Conclusion

Preoperative serum CD4+, C4, IgA, and HBV DNA levels were linked with early recurrence of early-stage HCC with MVI and the combination model was of considerable predictive value for the prognosis of HCC with MVI.

Keywords:

• Hepatocellular carcinoma
• microvascular invasion
• serum immune biomarker
• recurrence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The present work was financially supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China (82260345, 81860512); The Guangxi Provincial Key Research and Development Program (Guike AB22080066); The Cultivation Program of Guangxi One Thousand Young and Middle-aged College and University Backbone Teachers; The Young and Middle-aged Teachers’ Scientific Research Basic Ability Promotion Project of Guangxi (2019KY0139); The Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (2016GXNSFBA380091, 2018GXNSFAA138006); Special fund of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Tumor Molecular Medical Engineering Research Center (Engineering Research Center No. 2021-1-1).