High serum levels of vascular endothelial growth factor in patients with human hepatocellular carcinoma

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is intimately involved in neovascularization. in addition, it is know that in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), angiogenesis is indispensable for tumor growth. In this study, we measured the serum VEGF levels of patients with HCC and studies the relationship between the serum VEGF level and maximum tumor diameter as well as that between the serum VEGF level and the serum a-fetoprotein (AFP) level. Mean serum VEGF level were 5.33 +/- 0.77, 3.97 +/- 0.68, 2.64 +/- 0.78, and 2.57 +/- 0.97 ng/ml for patients with HCC, chronic hepatitis (CH), or liver cirrhosis (LC) and normal controls (NC), respectively, with that of the HCC patients being significantly (P < 0.05) higher than that of the LC patient or NC. In addition, the serum VEGF level was significantly (r = 0.53, P < 0.05) correlated with the maximum tumor diameter in the HCC patients, and the sera of the patients with hypervascular HCC showed a significantly (P < 0.01) higher VEGF titer than the sera of the patients with isovascular or hypovascular HCC. However, there was no significant correlation between serum VEGF level and serum AFP level. These findings suggest that VEGF may play an important role, apart from that in AFP production, in the development of HCC. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.