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Abstract
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a single stranded RNA virus, Flaviviridae family. It is the main cause of chronic HCV diseases like Fibrosis, Cirrhosis, HCC and end stage liver disease. In Egypt, more that 94% of all HCC cases are associated with chronic HCV infection. Early diagnosis can significantly improve the low survival of HCC patients. However, current diagnostic markers are compromised and limited by their low sensitivity and specivicity. Our previous work refered to a group of protiens that are elevated in HCC and can be promising biomarkers for early detection. So our main aim is to validate whether four circulating proteins can be used as potential diagnostic biomarkers in Egyptian HCC patients infected with HCV virus. In this study, four proteins (SAA2, KNG1, PON1 and GAL3) in additional to AFP as a standard tumor marker were analyzed in 143 serum samples; 51 HCV associated HCC patients, 52 HCV pateints in addition to 40 healthy control subjects using sandwich ELISA technique.The sensitivity and specificity of those proteins were also assessed.Highly significant increase in the mean level of SAA2, KNG1 and GAL3 proteins was reported whereas a highly significant decrease in the level of PON1 protein was recorded compared to both HCV group and healthy contrls. In additon, the diangostic performance was determined by receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analysis. SAA2 provided the highest diagnostic accuracy (AUC=0.925) in HCC patients. Morever, the diagnostic accuracy increased slightly when SAA2 was combined with AFP (AUC=0.946).Conclusion: Serum SAA2 protein may have a diagnostic value with high accuracy for discriminating HCC associated with HCV patients from both controls and high-risk patients