GOR-antibodies in patients with chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma

HCV infection frequently leads to liver cirrhosis and the development of hepatocellular carcinoma, while the mechanisms of carcinogenesis are still unclear. Autoantibodies like antinuclear antibodies have been described to increase and change their specificity in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. Autoantibodies against GOR, an antigen not encoded by the viral but by the host's genome and overexpressed in tumor cells, are frequently associated with hepatitis C infection, but their significance during the development of hepatocellular carcinoma has not been determined yet. We analysed the frequency of GOR-antibodies in 38 patients with hepatocellular carcinoma on the grounds of liver cirrhosis of different origin, 38 patients with extrahepatic tumors, 24 patients with hepatitis C infection and 30 healthy controls. GOR-antibodies were found to be specifically associated with hepatitis C and were only found in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma if the liver cirrhosis was due to HCV-infection. Patients with extrahepatic tumors with or without liver metastasis had no detectable GOR antibodies, if no HCV infection was present. The determination of antibodies to the autoantigen GOR therefore has no clinical significance in patients with hepatic or extrahepatic tumors not related to HCV infection.