The Usefulness of Serum Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) as a Prognostic Index in Patients with Chronic Liver Diseases

Abstract

Background/Aims : Serum HGF is increased in patients with liver diseases and it exhibited higher levels in patients with fulminant hepatic failure. Increased levels of serum HGF in the rat following partial hepatectomy or carbon tetrachloride-induced liver damage strongly suggests that it plays a key role in liver regeneration. Serum HGF

levels correlate with the grade of hepatic coma and are reported to be a useful marker

of hepatic dysfunction. But until now, reports regarding seam HGF in liver diseases

have been focused mainly on fulminant liver failure, so we attempted to measure serum

HGF levels in chronic liver diseases to investigate the usefulness of serum HGF as a

prognostic index.

Methods : The seam HGF in 140 patients with liver diseases and in 20 healthy

individuals was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) using a

monoclonal anti-human HGF antibody.

Results : Mean values for serum HGF in patients with acute hepatitis, chronic

hepatitis, liver cirrhosis (LC) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were 0.5±1.1, 0.4±0.9, 4.6±11.0, 0.7±1.1 ng/ml, respectively. Serum HGF levels in these patients were significantly increased compared with those in healthy hepatitis B virus carriers and normal controls (p<.001, p<.001, respectively), and showed a positive correlation with serum total bilirubin, prothrombin time and asparate minotransferase (AST) (p<.001, p<.001, p<.05, respectively), and a negative orrelation with albumin (p<.001). Among

the patients with liver diseases, seam HGF levels of patients with LC were much higher

than those of other liver diseases (p<.001). HCC patients with Child-Pugh class C (n=7)

had higher levels of serum HGF than those graded as Child-Pugh class A (n=19) or B

(n=14) (p<.001, p<.05, respectively). All cirrhotic patients with Child-Pugh class C

(n=19) including patients with HCC had higher levels of serum HGF than those graded

as Child-Pugh class A (n=24) or B (n=22) (p<.05, p<.05, respectively).

Conclusion : These findings suggest that serum HGF reflects the degree of liver

dysfunction in chronic hepatic failure, and that measurement of serum HGF levels in

chronic liver diseases serves as a prognostic index.