الفهرس 
Introduction and Aim of the workOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The current study was performed to determine the diagnostic performance of dickkopf-1 (DKK1) and amphiregulin (AREG) as serum biomarkers in HCC and finding out their correlation to the different clinicopathological parameters of HCC patients.High dickkopf-1 level was correlated to larger tumor size, poor performance status and hepatic dysfunction. In addition, DKK1 level in HCV-related HCC was significantly higher than its level in non-HCV-related HCC.Serum DKK1 showed a better diagnostic performance than AFP with higher AUC (0.826), sensitivity 87.3%, specificity 82.9%. In addition, serum DKK1 was positive in 91.7% (22/24) of AFP-negative HCC cases. Combined determination of AFP plus DKK1 showed higher AUC=0.89 and higher sensitivity.Serum AREG level in HCC cases was significantly higher than that of cirrhotic patients and control group. Serum AREG level in HCC patients with portal vein invasion or metastasis was significantly lower than non-metastatic HCC patients and those without portal vein invasion. Therefore, Serum DKK1 alone or combined with serum AFP could be a better diagnostic biomarker for HCC in comparison with serum AFP alone. In addition, significant correlation of serum DKK1 to tumor size, hepatic dysfunction and poor performance status suggests that DKK1 could be a promising therapeutic target in HCC. AREG may lack a prominent role in diagnosing HCC but analysis of different AREG forms in metastatic tissues along with serum AREG in the future researches may reveal if tissue targeting could be a novel trend to prevent tumor progression and metastasis in HCC patients.These findings should be validated in further studies recruiting large number of patients.