Why the study?
Does the differential lectin reactivity of alpha-fetoprotein improve diagnostic differentiation between hepatocellular carcinoma and other hepatic diseases in patients with slightly raised serum AFP levels?
Does the differential lectin reactivity of alpha-fetoprotein improve diagnostic differentiation between hepatocellular carcinoma and other hepatic diseases in patients with slightly raised serum AFP levels?
Electrophoretic analysis of AFP L2 and L3 bands can help distinguish hepatocellular carcinoma from benign and metastatic liver diseases in patients with mildly elevated AFP.
Potential adjunct for HCC differentiation in mildly elevated AFP; hypothesis-generating and requires prospective validation before practice change.
The specificity and sensitivity of alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) binding to Concanavalin-A (Con-A) and Lens culinaris agglutinin (LCA) in 26 South African blacks with advanced symptomatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) but only slightly raised serum AFP concentrations (20-500 ng/mL) was compared with that in patients with similar serum AFP levels from diseases that might be mistaken clinically for HCC (seven 'benign' liver disease [BLD] patients and six with metastatic liver disease [MLD] from gastrointestinal tumours). Con-A-Sepharose-4B affinity chromatography did not differentiate between the different groups: fucosylation rations for the HCC patients were 0.81 +/- 0.60, compared with 0.63 +/- 0.27 and 0.54 +/- 0.32 in patients with BLD and MLD, respectively. Electrophoresis of AFP serum and fraction in the presence or absence of Con-A and LCA showed an increase in the AFP C2 band. Rank correlation analysis of the AFP L2 and L3 bands combined could distinguish between patients with HCC and other hepatic diseases (P less than 0.05).
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STADEN et al. (1992) studied this question.
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