| AIM To investigate the relationships between metastasis or recurrence of human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the expressions of glypican-3 (GPC3) mRNA and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) mRNA in peripheral blood cells (PBCs), and to determine the values of GPC3 mRNA used singly or combined with AFP mRNA in the diagnosis of HCC micrometastasis. METHODS Using semi-quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), we detected the expressions of the above two genes in the tissues of 41 HCC and 15 non-HCC tumor samples, and 11 normal liver samples, and analysed the usefulness of GPC3 mRNA and AFP mRNA in the diagnosis of HCC, the relationship between the expression of each gene and biological behavior of HCC, the correlation of the two genes in HCC tissues. Basing on these results and the method of detecting AFP mRNA in the PBCs, we surveyed the expression of GPC3 mRNA in the 67 specimens of PBCs from 41 HCC patients, 11 non-HCC tumor subjects, 15 healthy volunteers by means of semi-quantitative and semi-nested RT-PCR. RESULTS GPC3 mRNA was expressed broadly in the tissues, and the relative intensities of its expressions in HCC, paracancer, non-HCC tumor tissues were respectively 78.9±35.5, 30.6±21.6, 36.6±25.2, and its expression in the tissues far from HCC and normal liver was 23.8±15.5. The respective AFP mRNA expression values were 61.2±32.6, 31.5±23.6, 29.0±24.7 and 21.2±15.9. The expressions of the two genes in HCC differed significantly from those in other three kinds of tissues (P<0.01). The expressions of GPC3 mRNA and AFP mRNA, accounting for 80.5 % and 63.4 % in all the HCC tissues, were higher than their respective...
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