Association Between Recurrence of Hepatocellular Carcinoma and α-Fetoprotein Messenger RNA Levels in Peripheral Blood

Abstract Purpose  Intra- and extrahepatic recurrence is common, even after curative resection for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), suggesting preoperative or intraoperative tumor cell dissemination. Reverse transcription — polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for α-fetoprotein (AFP) is used to detect circulating liver cancer cells. We previously developed a quantitative method that allows estimation of the AFP mRNA level by real-time PCR. In the present study, we used this method to measure the AFP mRNA level before and after resection of HCC, then correlated the findings with various clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis.