الفهرس 
H EPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMAOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths. Until recently; alpha feto protein (AFP) has been the most widely used plasma marker for diagnosis, surveillance and as a prognostic indicator of HCC patients’ survival but it has a low sensitivity, and specificity. Several tumor markers have been proposed as complement or substitute for AFP in HCC diagnosis. Lens culinaris agglutininA-reactive fraction of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP-L3), and des-gamma-carboxy prothrombin (DCP) have been established as HCC-specific tumor markers. However AFP-L3 and DCP are less sensitive than AFP for the diagnosis of early and very early stage of HCC.
Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the role of serum chromogranin A as a marker for detection of HCC and to assess the difference in the level of serum chromogranin A in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) complicating chronic hepatitis B and C.
Subjects and Methods: This study included four groups (group I and II are test groups while group III and IV are control groups); group (I) (HBV-related HCC group) consists of 15 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma complicated chronic hepatitis B, all patients HBV+ve and HCV-ve. While group (II) (HCV-related HCC group) consists of 30 with hepatocellular carcinoma complicated chronic hepatitis C, all patients HCV+ve and HBV-Ve. group (III) (Cirrhotic group) consists of 15 patients with liver cirrhosis, 5 patients HBV+ve and 10 patient HCV+ve. group (IV) (control group) consists of 15 healthy subjects with negative viral markers. All patients were neither Alcoholic, nor asthmatic and non pregnant, also negative for HIV, ANA-ve and negative for other neoplasia (other than HCC) by clinical examination and pelvi-abdominal CT.
Results: In our study we found that regards the median levels of CgA, there were statistically significant differences between the HCC groups and control groups. No significant correlations were found between chromogranin and Age, CBC, kidney functions and other liver function tests. There was no statistically significant elevation between the median serum CgA in HBV-related HCC and HCV-related HCC.
Conclusion: CgA is a sensitive and specific tumor marker for detection of HCC. Combination between CgA and AFP increases the sensitivity of the diagnosis of HCC.