The usefulness of anti-fucosylated antigen antibody YB-2 for diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma.

Levels of fucosylated antigens in sera from patients with liver diseases were examined by a newly developed sandwich-type enzyme immuno assay with the aid of anti-fucosylated antigen antibody, YB-2 which reacts simultaneously with Y, Leb and H type 2 antigens. When the cut-off value was set arbitrarily at mean +3 SD values of normal, 30 (69.8%) of the 43 patients with HCC, 14 (53.8%) of the 26 patients with liver cirrhosis (LC) and 24 (45.3%) of the 53 patients with chronic hepatitis (CH) were found to be positive, whereas all of the 30 samples from healthy controls were negative. The levels of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and protein induced by vitamin K absence or antagonist-II (PIVKA-II) in HCC were not correlated with those of YB-2 antigens. The positive rates of the combination YB-2 and AFP assay and YB-2 and PIVKA-II assay in HCC were significantly higher (83.7 and 86.0%, respectively) than that of the AFP and PIVKA-II combination (65.1%) which had been reported to be the best combination up to this time.