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Circulating HBcrAg, miRNA-122, and M2BPGi as Predictive Biomarkers for Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Chronic Hepatitis
Amgad Ahmed Ezzat Othman1, Mohamed S Hemeda2, Khaled Mohamed Hassanein Mohamed3
1Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.
Abstract:
miRNA-122, HBcrAg, M2BPGi, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Chronic hepatitis B, Forensic biomarkers, Toxicological relevance.
Background & Objective:
Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection has highly negative consequences for the global population, with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection and the resulting hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) representing one of the most concerning long-term outcomes. This study focuses on the use of several biomarkers (miRNA-122, HBcrAg, and M2BPGi) in liquid biopsies to evaluate their efficacy in detecting early-stage HCC and assessing risk in patients with CHB.
Methods:
This study included 90 participants. Of these participants, 30 had chronic hepatitis B (CHB), 30 had hepatocellular carcinoma with HBV (HCC), and 30 were healthy controls. Serum miRNA-122 was quantified with real-time PCR, and HBcrAg and M2BPGi were measured using ELISA.
Results:
MiRNA-122 had an AUC of 0.801 and a sensitivity of 85.2%, indicating the highest diagnostic performance among the studies evaluated. M2BPGi demonstrated strong performance, with an AUC of 0.84. By contrast, HBcrAg had a very weak discriminative value. These previously stated biomarkers can improve the peripheral non-invasive screening.
Conclusion:
In this initial cohort study, circulating miRNA-122 and M2BPGi demonstrate an unsuspected capacity to predict HCC differentiation in CHB patients. However, these are preliminary and have yet to be tested for robustness across multicenter studies with appropriately estimated sample sizes.
