Serum hepatocyte growth factor in gastric cancer and its clinical significance

Objective Hepatocyte growth factor(HGF) is a polypeptide growth factor,which can promote cell proliferation,and induce metastasis,invasiveness and angiogenesis.It plays an important role in tumor development.We measured serum concentrations of HGF in 80 patients with gastric cancer and compared them with various clinicopathological characteristics and conventional tumor markers,including carcinoembryonic antigen(CEA) and carbohydrate antigen 19-9(CA19-9),for evaluating of the significance of serum HGF levels in gastric cancer patients. 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 sample 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 was significantly higher than that of healthy controls[(2.94±2.67)μg/L vs.(1.02±0.31)μg/L,P=0.002].An increased serum HGF level was associated with stage progression;serum HGF level in stageⅠpatients was significantly lower than those in stageⅢand stageⅣpatients [(2.19±2.12)μg/L,(3.92±3.45)μg/L and(4.13±3.71)μg/L,respectively],and statistically significant differences were found between the serum HGF level of stageⅠand those of stageⅢ(P0.05) and stageⅣpatients(P0.05).Pathological factor analyses demonstrated that the patients with lymph node and liver metastasis presented significantly higher serum concentration of HGF(P=0.016 and P=0.009,respectively).After operation,serum level of HGF in 60 patients with curative resection were lowered,a statistical difference was found between pre-and post-operative values(P0.05).In comparison with conventional tumor markers for gastric cancer,serum HGF level was elevated in 64(80%) of 80 gastric cancer patients,and the serum CA19-9 and CEA levels were elevated in 13(16.2%) and 4(5.0%) cases,respectively.The positive rate of HGF was higher than that of CA19-9 and CEA testing(P0.01).Conclusions The mean serum level of HGF in gastric cancer patients is significantly higher than that of healthy controls.Over-expression of the serum HGF level has been noted with higher tumor stagings.These findings suggest that the measurement of serum HGF level might be a useful indicator for monitoring tumor progression and prognosis in patients with gastric cancer.