الفهرس 
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Abstract
Background and objective:HCC has become the second most prevalent cancer among men in Egypt.
This is attributed to the high prevalence of HCV infection which one of the
major risk factor for HCC. Previous studies reported upregulation of miR-
221 in HBV related HCC tissues. Three studies were conducted to
investigate the potential use of serum miR-221 as a biomarker for HCC and
gave inconsistent results. This study was conducted to investigate serum
miR-221 expression in Egyptian hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients.
Subjects and methods
This study included 20 HCC patients , 10 CHC patients and 10 control
subjects.They were subjected to history taking, clinical examination ,
laboratory investigations including: serum alpha feto protein assessment and
relative quantification of serum miR-221.
Results:
Serum miR-221 was slightly higher in HCC patients than in healthy
controls, but this did not reach statistical significance (P= 0.39). There was
no correlation between miR-221 expression and the clinicopathological
features of the tumors. However, serum miR-221 was significantly elevated
in CHC patients compared to healthy controls (P= 0.003) and HCC patients
(P= 0.006). Moreover, miR-221 and ALT and AST levels were positively
correlated (r= 0.68, P= 0.03) in CHC patients. Receiver operating
characteristic (ROC) curve clearly discriminates between CHC patients and
healthy controls, (area under ROC curve = 0.96, 95% CI [confidence
interval], 0.865-1.06, P= 0.005), with 90% sensitivity and 80% specificity at
a cut off value of 3.04 fold increase.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, miR-221 was significantly elevated in sera of CHC patients
more than healthy subjects and HCC patients. MiR-221 was nonsignificantly
higher in HCC patients than in healthy controls. Among
HCC patients, serum levels of miR-221 did not differ according to age,
gender, Child Pugh score or number of tumors. Also, there was no
correlation between levels of miR-221 and levels of AFP.