Estimation of Clusterin Role As a Biomarker for Virus C-related Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Background: More than 500,000 new patients are diagnosed every year with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) worldwide. Clusterin (apolipoprotein J) is a multifunctional glycoprotein that exists in almost all mammalian tissue and most human body fluids. Recently, few studies have been done to evaluate serum clusterin role as a biomarker for diagnosis viral related hepatocellular carcinoma.Aim: The aim of this study is to evaluate the potential usefulness of clusterin as a new biomarker for diagnosing virus C-related hepatocellular carcinoma.Subjects and Methods: Twenty-nine patients with HCC, twenty-nine patients with liver cirrhosis and thirty healthy controls were enrolled in the study. Estimation of serum clusterin was done by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Alanine aminotransferase (ALT) activity, aspartate aminotransferase (AST) activity, albumin level, bilirubin level as well as creatinine level were measured in serum by routine enzymatic method. Sera were stored at -20˚C to measure alpha fetoprotein (AFP) concentration and clusterin concentration.Results: Serum clusterin level was not significantly elevated in patients with HCC (p>0.05). Receiver operator curve showed that AFP had a greater area under curve value (0.92) than that of clusterin (0.58)Conclusion: our study concluded that AFP is still the gold standard tumor biomarker for HCV related HCC, and that it can be used in conjunction with ultrasonography in the early detection of HCC instead of serum clusterin.