Cartilage oligomeric matrix protein as a non-invasive biomarker for diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with liver cirrhosis

AIM: The current study purposed to evaluate serum COMP (Cartilage oligomeric matrix protein) as a diagnostic marker for HCC in patients with cirrhosis and to correlate it with other parameters of disease progression. BACKGROUND: COMP is known to promote fibrosis in various tissues. Emerging evidence shows that COMP plays critical roles in tumor development. It can serve as a fibrosis and cancer biomarkers. METHODS: The study included 24 subjects who serve as the healthy control, 24 cirrhotic patients without HCC, and 24 HCC patients with cirrhosis. All participants were subjected to liver function tests, AFP, calculation of fibrotic indices (APRI and FIB-4), and serum COMP by ELISA. RESULTS: COMP was significantly increased in cirrhotic patients when compared to healthy controls and in HCC patients when compared to cirrhotic patients and healthy controls. A significant positive correlation was observed between COMP and APRI and FIB-4 in cirrhotic and HCC patients. Based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, COMP had an area under curve (AUC) of 0.943 with 87.5% sensitivity and 79.2% specificity for diagnosis of HCC in cirrhotic patients. In combination with AFP, the sensitivity was increased to 100%. CONCLUSION: COMP might act as a promising non-invasive biomarker for HCC either alone or in combination with AFP. It was correlated with the degree of fibrosis and associated with advanced cancer staging.