ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the significance of combined detection of biomarkers in the diagnosis of early stage primary liver cancer.Methods:A retrospective study model was adopted to analyze 60 patients who were hospitalized from January 2018 to September 2019 in General Hospital of Xuzhou Mining Group and were pathologically diagnosed as early stage primary liver cancer (early stage liver cancer group), and 60 patients with liver cirrhosis (liver cirrhosis group), 30 patients with hepatitis (hepatitis group), 30 healthy examiners (healthy control group) who were admitted during the same period were selected. All participants were tested for liver cancer biomarkers such as alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), vitamin K deficiency Ⅱ-inducing protein (PIVKA-Ⅱ), alpha-fetoprotein variant (AFP-L3) and Golgi protein 73 (GP73). The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) was used to compare the differences in the diagnosis of early stage primary liver cancer between individual and combined detection of different indicators.Results:The levels of AFP-L3, AFP, PIVKA-Ⅱ and GP73 in the early stage liver cancer group were higher than those in the cirrhosis group, hepatitis group and healthy control group, and the differences were statistically significant (all P < 0.05). PIVKA-Ⅱ had the largest area under the receiver operator characteristic curve (AUC) for diagnosing early stage liver cancer, which was 0.776; AFP-L3 had the highest specificity for diagnosing early stage liver cancer, which was 82.2%; GP73 had the highest sensitivity for diagnosing early stage liver cancer, which was 80.0%. The AUC of the four indicators in the diagnosis of early stage liver cancer was 0.922, which was higher than a single indicator, and the sensitivity reached 91.7%. Conclusions:Liver cancer biomarkers AFP-L3, PIVKA-Ⅱ, AFP and GP73 all have certain diagnostic value in the diagnosis of early stage primary liver cancer. The combined detection has important clinical significances for diagnosis of early stage primary liver cancer and assessment of liver damage.