Liu Yang, Zhang Bai-He, Qian Guang-Xiang, Chen Han, Wu Meng-Chao
Eastern Hospital of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Second Military Medical University, Shanghai 200433, China.
Hepatobiliary Pancreat Dis Int. 2003 May;2(2):274-7.
To detect the expression of human alpha-fetoprotein mRNA (AFPmRNA) in peripheral blood (PBL) of recurrent hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by using nested reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (nested RT-PCR) and to discuss relations between AFPmRNA and recurrent HCC.
Five ml peripheral blood samples were obtained from 19 patients with recurrent HCC. To identify HCC cells in PBL, liver-specific AFPmRNA was amplified from the total RNA extracted from the whole blood by nested RT-PCR.
Seven patients (36.8%) with recurrent HCC were detected AFPmRNA, and 12 patients with recurrent HCC were AFPmRNA negative (63.2%). There was no significant relation between patients with AFPmRNA positive and AFPmRNA negative (P>0.05) in judging the origin of recurrent HCC.
AFPmRNA may not be used as a marker of origin of recurrent HCC.
