Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant tumor worldwide. Due to the lack of early prediction marker, numerous patients were diagnosed in their late stage. The family of cavins plays important roles in caveolae formation and cellular processes. Cavin-2, one of the members of cavins, has been reported as a suppresser in cancers. In this study, we have investigated its expression pattern and clinical significance in HCC.
Methods: RT‑qPCR was performed to detect the expression of cavin-2.
Results: Cavin-2 was down-regulated in HCC and associated with tumor differentiation (r=-0.275, P=0.013) and tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (r=-0.216, P=0.035). The Overall survival analysis showed that patients with lower cavin-2 expression had a relatively poor prognosis. Meanwhile, the multivariate analysis revealed that cavin-2 was an independent prognostic factor. The receiver operating characteristic curve analyses indicated that plasma cavin-2 presented a high accuracy (AUC=0.727, 0.865, 0.901) for diagnosing HCC cases from controls, hepatitis B and cirrhosis patients, respectively. Meanwhile, plasma cavin-2 showed a high sensitivity (88.4%, 89.9%) for detecting HCC with the serum α‑fetoprotein (AFP) levels below 200 ng/ml from those hepatitis B and cirrhosis cases.
Conclusion: Our data suggested that cavin-2 might be considered as a potential prognostic and diagnostic indicator in HCC.
© 2016 The Author(s) Published by S. Karger AG, Basel.