Evaluation of alpha-l-fucosidase for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma based on meta-analysis

Abstract

ObjectivesThe main aim of the present study was to assess the diagnostic value of alpha-l-fucosidase (AFU) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).MethodsStudies that explored the diagnostic value of AFU in HCC were searched in EMBASE, SCI, and PUBMED. The sensitivity, specificity, and DOR about the accuracy of serum AFU in the diagnosis of HCC were pooled. The methodological quality of each article was evaluated with QUADAS-2 (quality assessment for studies of diagnostic accuracy 2). Receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) analysis was performed. Statistical analysis was conducted by using Review Manager 5 and Open Meta-analyst.ResultsEighteen studies were selected in this study. The pooled estimates for AFU vs. α-fetoprotein (AFP) in the diagnosis of HCC in 18 studies were as follows: sensitivity of 0.7352 (0.6827, 0.7818) vs. 0.7501 (0.6725, 0.8144), and specificity of 0.7681 (0.6946, 0.8283) vs. 0.8208 (0.7586, 0.8697), diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) of 7.974(5.302, 11.993) vs. 13.401 (8.359, 21.483), area under the curve (AUC) of 0.7968 vs. 0.8451, respectively.ConclusionsAFU is comparable to AFP for the diagnosis of HCC.

Biomarkers in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Current Status and Future Perspectives

“…The diagnostic efficiency of AFU was lower than AFP (cut-off value of 20 ng/mL for AFP) in this study [46]. In contrast, another study involving 1053 HCC patients showed that AFU exerted the same diagnostic power as AFP in both sensitivities (73.52% for AFU vs. 75.01% for AFP) and specificities (76.81% for AFU vs. 82.08% for AFP) [47]. It is worth noting that overexpression of AFP was also observed in other non-HCC diseases such as esophageal squamous cell carcinomas [48] and preeclampsia [49] which could markedly reduce the specificity of AFU for HCC diagnosis.…”

Microfluidics-aided fabrication of 3D micro-nano hierarchical SERS substrate for rapid detection of dual hepatocellular carcinoma biomarkers

“…In the past decade, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has exhibited particularly high incidence and high mortality rates among all cancers. 1 The overexpression of glycoproteins may be related to many kinds of diseases. 2 For instance, the glycoprotein α-fetoprotein (AFP) is regarded as a biomarker for the early diagnosis of HCC.…”

“…[5][6][7] Therefore, the AFU in human serum levels have become a sensitive and specific biomarker for diagnosis, efficacy observation and postoperative follow-up of patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma and are a good complementary method to detect AFP in human serum. 1,8,9 Many studies have indicated that the detection of multiple biomarkers played a key role in the clinical diagnosis of cancer, reducing treatment times and costs, and giving accurate results in clinical diagnostics. [10][11][12] Unfortunately, as far as we know, only a few studies have reported the simultaneous detection of AFP and AFU to diagnose primary HCC.…”