The prognosis of the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is very poor because the diagnosis is generally late. Therefore early detection is important in the management of HCC. This study aims at evaluating Alpha-L-Fucosidase (AFU) as a new tumour marker for HCC in comparison to Alpha feto protein (AFP). For this purpose, 27 patients with HCC were investigated for AFU and AFP. In addition, 20 patients with liver cirrhosis were taken as cirrhotic control and 20 healthy individuals as normal control. Used together AFU and AFP could detect 24 patients out of 27 patients with HCC with a sensitivity of 89% instead of 48.15% for AFP alone at cutoff value of 511.8 ng/m1 and instead of 70.37% for AFU at a cutoff value of 453.2 nmol/ml/hour. The specificity of AFU and AFP was 100% and 97.5% respectively in patients with HCC. Therefore AFU can be considered as a sensitive and specific marker for detection of HCC especially small sized tumour in addition to the assay of AFP and ultrasonography for the early detection of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with cirrhosis. If financial constraints are considered AFU is both cheaper to measure than AFP and has a lesser initial outlay for laboratory equipment. |
