Clinical Performance of α-L-Fucosidase for Early Detection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

Aim: To evaluate the diagnostic performance of serum AFU for early stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: Concentration of AFU and AFP were measured in 512 patients. The performance was compared for AFU and AFP alone or in combination. Results: The area under the curve (AUC) for AFU was 0.68, with a sensitivity of 56.1% and specificity of 69.2% at the cut-off value of 24 U/l; whereas the AUC for AFP was 0.83, with a sensitivity of 58.2% and specificity of 85.2% at cut-off value of 20 ng/ml. The AUC of AFU alone or the combination with AFP were lower than that of AFP alone. Conclusion: AFU is a suboptimal biomarker for early detection of HCC.

Keywords:

• α-L-fucosidase
• α-fetoprotein
• area under the curve
• biomarker
• diagnostic performance
• early detection
• early stage-HCC
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• sensitivity
• specificity

Author contributions

H Xing, H Qiu, X Di, J Han and Z Li contributed equally to this work. T Yang, Y Zheng and F Shen were responsible for study conception and design. H Qiu, X Ding, J Han, H Wu, Z Li, H Zhang, C Yan, H Li and R Han were responsible for acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data. H Xing, Y Zhen and T Yang were responsible for manuscript draft and revision. F Shen, M Wu and Y Zheng were responsible for study supervision. H Xing, M Wang and C Li were responsible for statistical analysis. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 81472284 and 81672699).  The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Medical writing support was provided by M Grech and no funding was provided for the support.

Ethical conduct of research

The study was reviewed and approved for publication by our Institutional Reviewers of involved hospitals. All study participants or their legal guardian provided informed written consent about personal and medical data collection prior to study enrolment.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 81472284 and 81672699).  The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.