MEASUREMENT OF SERUM CORE FUCOSYLATED TRANSFERRIN AND ITS APPLICATION IN THE DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS OF MALIGNANT LIVER DISEASES

LU Y, CHEN YB, WU XY.

Department of Medical Laboratory Sciences, Hua Shan Hospital, Shanghai Medical University, Shanghai, P.R. China

Many experimental data indicated that the structure of sugar chains of the serum transferrin secreted from the malignant hepatocytes are fucosylated at the trimannosyl core of their sugar chains. In contrast, most of this glycoprotein produced by normal hepatocytes are not core fucosylated. In this report, serum core fucosylated transferrin (cFuc-Tf) was isolated from sera of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, benign liver diseases and healthy individuals by immobilized Lens culinaris agglutinin (LCA) affinity chromatography column and determined by immunoturbidimetry. It was found that the contents (mean ± SD) of serum cFuc-Tf from 50 healthy individuals, 44 patients with benign liver diseases and 19 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma were 36.0 ± 34.9 mg/L, 40.5 ± 34.2 mg/L and 167.8 ± 104 mg/L, respectively. The results indicate that patients with hepatocellular carcinoma had significantly higher levels of serum cFuc-Tf than patients with benign liver diseases and those of the healthy individuals. The specificity and positive rate of cFuc-Tf (over 140.7 mg/L) were 98.9% and 57.9% for the diagnosis of hepatoma respectively. For the hepatoma patients with high serum levels of AFP (over 40 mg/L), the positive rate could be as high as 100%. In conclusion, the measurement of serum cFuc-Tf may be useful for the differential diagnosis of malignant liver diseases.


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