Expression In The Serum Level Of Hepatocyte Growth Factor In Gastric Cancer Patients And Its Significance

Research background:Gastric cancer is currently one of the most common cancers. The mortality rate of gastric cancer ranks the first in gastrointestinal tumors.Lymphatic and distant metastases are the leading causes of gastric cancer death.Recent studies have showed that HGF/c-Met plays an important role in tumor progression.HGF can promote proliferation,motility,invasion and angiogenesis in various tumor cells,and contribute to development of tumor cell metastasis.However,there are few reports regarding the clinical relevance of HGF in patients with gastric cancer in our country, and especially in the studies of relationship between serum HGF level and gastric cancer.Objective:we measured serum concentrations of hepatocyte growth factor(HGF) in 80 patients with gastric carcinoma and compared them with various clinicopathological characteristics and conventional tumor markers,including carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carbohydrate antigen(CA19-9),for evaluation of the significance of serum HGF levels.Methods:Preoperative serum HGF levels were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) system in 80 patients with gastric cancer and the levels of CEA and CA19-9 in the same serum samples were examined using the ELISA system.Furthermore,preoperative and postoperative serum concentrations of HGF in 60 patients with curative resection were measured.Results:The mean value of serum HGF in 80 patients with gastric cancer was significantly higher than that in the healthy control subjects(2.94±2.67ng/ml vs.1.02±0.31 ng/ml,p= 0.002).An increased serum HGF levels were associated with stage progression.Serum HGF levels in stageⅠpatients were significantly lower than those inⅢstage and stageⅣpatients(2.19±2.12 ng/ml,3.92±3.45 ng/ml and 4.13±3.71 ng/ml,respectively),and statistically significant differences were found between the serum HGF levels of stageⅠand those of stageⅢ(p＜0.05) and stageⅣpatients(p＜ 0.05).Pathological factor analyses demonstrated that the patients with lymph node metastasis and liver metastasis had markedly higher serum concentration of HGF(p= 0.016 and p=0.009,respectively).In comparison with conventional tumor markers for gastric cancer,serum HGF levels were elevated in 30(37.5%) of 80 gastric cancer patients.Serum CA19-9 levels and CEA levels were elevated in 11(13.75%) and 4(5.0 %) cases,respectively.The positive rate of HGF elevation was higher than that of combined CA19-9 and CEA testing(18.75%,p=0.013).After operation,serum levels of HGF in 60 patients with curative resection were decreased,no statistical difference wsa found between before and after surgery(p＞0.05).The serum HGF levels in 4 patients 1 month after curative resection of the tumors decreased significantly to as low as cut-off value.Conclusions:The mean serum level of HGF in gastric cancer patients is significantly higher than that in the healthy control subjects.Over-expression of the serum HGF levels has been correlated with higher tumor stages.These findings suggest that the measurement of serum HGF levels might be a useful indicator for monitoring tumor progression and prognosis in patients with gastric carcinoma.