OBJECTIVESTo determine the pre-therapeutic serum level of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and to elucidate the relation between the serum level and clinical characteristics and metastasis of HCC.

METHODSOne-hundred and fifteen HCC patients, 40 patients with benign liver lesions, and 30 healthy control subjects were included in this study. The serum VEGF level was measured with the quantitative sandwich enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA, R&D systems).

RESULTSThe serum VEGF levels in the HCC group (465.62 +/- 336.24 pg/ml) was significantly elevated as compared with those in patients with benign liver lesions (159.54 +/- 120.58 pg/ml) and those in normal controls (123.53 +/- 51.84 pg/ml). The VEGF levels were not significantly different between the patients with benign liver lesions and the normal controls. The serum VEGF levels showed a positive rate of 77.4%, 25%, and 3.3% in the HCC patients, benign liver lesion patients and normal controls, respectively. In the 115 HCC patients, the serum VEGF levels in patients with portal vein (PV) emboli (n = 26, 582.76 +/- 441.89 pg/ml), with metastasis (n = 43, 548.29 +/- 438.57 pg/ml) or with large HCC lesions (>/= 5 cm in diameter) (n = 69, 554.43 +/- 369.99 pg/ml) were significantly higher than those without PV-emboli (n = 89, 431.39 +/- 292.84 pg/ml), without metastasis (n = 72, 416.24 +/- 247.27 pg/ml) or with small HCC lesions (n = 42, 328.67 +/- 227.47 pg/ml). The serum VEGF levels in stage I, II, III, IVa and IVb HCC patients were 340.6 pg/ml, 451.55 +/- 307.84 pg/ml, 397.44 +/- 257.18 pg/ml, 486.10 +/- 397.73 pg/ml and 647.93 +/- 344.56 pg/ml, respectively.

CONCLUSIONThe pre-therapeutic serum VEGF levels in HCC patients appear to reflect the disease's potential activity of vascular invasion and metastasis.