The investigation regarding the clinical significance of quantitative hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc) in HCC patients after transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is rare. The aim of this study was to determine the prognostic significance of anti-HBc in HCC patients after TACE. A total of 66 HCC patients with complete data and treated with TACE in Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University were retrospectively analyzed. Univariate analyses were performed for 20 pretreatment variables and those with a P value less than 0.05 by univariate analysis were subjected to Cox proportional hazards model. Among the 66 HCC patients, the 0.5-, 1-, and 2-year overall survival rates were 92.42%, 50.00%, and 21.21%, respectively. We defined 11.88 S/CO, with a maximum sum of sensitivity and specificity, as the optimal cut-off value of baseline anti-HBc level to predict the OS rate in HCC patients after TACE. Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed that baseline anti-HBc level, AFP level and vascular invasion were the only three independent significant prognostic factors of overall survival (P = 0.001, 0.020 and 0.010, respectively). We demonstrated that baseline anti-HBc level, combining AFP level and vascular invasion, might be a novel biomarker for predicting the survival of HCC patients after TACE.
Keywords: Hepatocellular carcinoma; hepatitis B core antibody; transarterial chemoembolization.