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Elevation of endoglin (CD105) concentrations in serum of patients with liver cirrhosis and carcinoma

Objective Liver cirrhosis is considered as a premalignant state, as about 80% of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with liver cirrhosis. Although alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) has a high negative predictive value, its sensitivity for detecting HCC is poor. The aim of this study was to evaluate circulating endoglin (CD105) in the serum of patients with liver cirrhosis and at high risk for HCC. Methods CD105 and AFP serum concentrations were measured in 70 healthy and 94 nonliver-diseased controls and 130 patients with chronic liver diseases and HCC, respectively. Results Fifty-seven liver cirrhotic patients, 45 patients with liver cirrhosis plus HCC, 19 liver fibrosis patients and nine patients with HCC only were studied. Serum CD105 is significantly elevated in liver cirrhotic patients compared with healthy (P<0.0001) and nonliver-diseased controls (P<0.0001). Patients with liver cirrhosis and HCC show the highest CD105 concentrations being significantly elevated in comparison to liver cirrhosis (P=0.0006) and HCC only (P=0.0134). A stronger positive correlation exists between CD105 and AFP in the patient group suffering from liver cirrhosis and HCC (r=0.479, P=0.0015) than the obtained correlation between both markers in the group of patients diagnosed with liver cirrhosis alone (r=0.358, P=0.0073). The logistic regression model identified CD105 as an independent marker (P=0.0077, odds ratio 1.3). Conclusion CD105 has the potential to be a novel complementary biomarker that has some important bearing on the risk assessment for development of HCC in cirrhotic patients.