Background: Hepatocel lular carcinoma (HCC) is the fi fth most common cancer and the thi rd leading cause of
death worldwide, causing 600,000 deaths annual ly . In Egypt, HCC accounts for 4.7% of al l l iver diseases.
Hospi tal -based studies have reported an overal l increase in the relative frequency of al l l iver cancers in Egypt
from approximately 4% in 1993 to 7.3% in 2003, more than 95% of which being HCC . Patients diagnosed at an
early stage of HCC have the best prognosis, where resection and t ransplantation achieve the best outcomes in
wel l -selected candidates, wi th a 5-year - survival rate of 50 to 70%. In this regard, the present study aimed to
demonstrate the potential cl inical importance of plasma levels of ci rculating mRNA of lamin B1 by real -time RT
PCR as an early marker of HCC. .
Methods: This study was conducted at the Cl inical Pathology Department and the subjects were selected from
Department of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Ain Shams Universi ty Hospi tals. It included thi r ty (30)
HCC patients of di fferent stages (group I) , they were further divided into 3 stages using BCLC staging system into
stage A, B and C, in addi tion to ten (10) cases wi th benign l iver diseases serving as patient cont rols (group II ) and
ten (10) heal thy age-and sex -matched subjects serving as heal thy cont rols (group III ) .
Results: The plasma laminB1 mRNA showed a much bet ter performance to di fferentiate between HCC cases and
the 2 control groups, where i ts sensi tivi ty was 100% and speci fici ty was 90%.
Conclusions: Addi tion of plasma lamin B1 mRNA to the cur rent standard tests for diagnosis of HCC as a new
diagnostic and screening tool . This, in turn, could greatly improve the abi l i ty to identi fy such patients and thus
could al low them to benefi t f rom earl ier t reatme nt.