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Background: The emerging plasma heat shock protein 90α (HSP90α) has good diagnostic value in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the prognosis was unclear. Aim of this study was to conduct an exploratory assessment of the prognostic value of plasma HSP90α in the HCC patients underwent hepatectomy. Methods: 422 HCC hepatectomy patients were included. The optimal cutoff value was determined by using X-tile software. Survival analysis endpoints were recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). Results: The median of preoperative HSP90α and postoperative HSP90α levels were 80.40 ng/ml and 56.6 ng/ml, respectively. HCC hepatectomy patients with preoperative HSP90α < 202.0 ng/ml and HSP90α < 132.3 ng/ml showed a longer RFS and OS relative to those with higher preoperative HSP90α levels (3.5 vs. 1.9 months, p < 0.001; 23.7 vs. 20.1 months, p < 0.001; respectively). HCC hepatectomy patients with postoperative HSP90α < 56.0 ng/ml and HSP90α < 126.0 ng/ml showed a longer RFS and OS relative to those with higher postoperative HSP90α levels (2.5 vs. 2.3 months, p < 0.01; 22.7 vs. 20.9 months, p < 0.01; respectively). Patients with an HSP90α increase greater than 190% had worse RFS and OS and decline greater than 78% had worse OS after hepatectomy. In those HCC patients with AFP≥400 ng/ml, both preoperative and postoperative HSP90α were significantly correlated with RFS and OS (all p < 0.001). In those HCC patients with AFP<400 ng/ml, the preoperative HSP90α were significantly correlated with RFS and OS, and the postoperative HSP90α were significantly correlated with RFS but not OS. Conclusions: Preliminary studies have shown that the plasma HSP90α is an independent prognostic factor in HCC patients who underwent hepatectomy.
Wei et al. (Thu,) studied this question.