[A preliminary study of serum marker alpha-enolase in the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma]

Objective: To investigate the diagnostic value of serum α-enolase (ENO1) in the primary hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods: From May 2012 to March 2017, 163 cases with liver diseases who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were admitted to the Infectious Diseases Department of the General Hospital of Ningxia Medical University. Among them, 28 cases were of chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 31 cases with liver cirrhosis (LC), 104 cases with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and 18 healthy volunteers (NC). Patient data and serum samples were collected and liver disease related indicators were measured to detect ENO1 levels with enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The measured indicators were expressed in median. Mann-Whitney U nonparametric test was used to analyze the differences between the data. A Spearman's correlation analysis was used for bivariate correlation analysis. The sensitivity and specificity of ENO1 and alpha-fetoprotein in the diagnosis of liver cancer were analyzed by ROC curve. Results: Serum level of ENO1 in CHB group, LC group and HCC group was significantly higher than normal group. Serum level of ENO1 in HCC group was higher than CHB group (P = 0.001) and LC group (P < 0.01). Area under the curve (AUC) for serum ENO1 and alpha-fetoprotein were 0.782 (cut-off value 75.96, P = 0.000 1) and 0.800 (cut-off value 27.02, P = 0.000 1), respectively. There was a positive correlation between ENO1 and AFP (P = 0.001). The combined detection had significantly improved the detection efficiency (AUC = 0.835). Serum ENO1 was statistically significant (P < 0.05) in HCC tumor size (AUC = 0.663), tumor metastasis (AUC = 0.681), TNM stage (AUC = 0.710, stage I vs. II), and Edmondson grade (AUC = 0.685) (P < 0.05) and the elevated levels of ENO1 had significantly reduced (P < 0.05) the survival time. Conclusion: ENO1 can be a new candidate marker for the diagnosis of early stage HCC and its progression.