Role of AFP mRNA expression in peripheral blood as a predictor for postsurgical recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Table 1 Main characteristics of selected publications.

Author	Yr	Cut-off	Study design	Data used for meta-analysis	n	Method
Wong et al	2001	The upper limit of	Cohort	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	15	Semi-quantitativec
		normal value		(6/10, 1/5)1		RT-PCR
Minata et al	2001	Dichotomized by the	Cohort	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	26	RT-PCR
		presence of AFP mRNA		(11/11, 1/15)
Witzigmann et al	2001	Dichotomized by the	Cohort	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	31	RT-PCR
		presence of AFP mRNA		(5/15, 4/16)
Lemoine et al	1997	Dichotomized by the	Cohort	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	17	RT-PCR
		presence of AFP mRNA		(2/10, 2/7)
Okuda et al	2001	Dichotomized by the	Cohort	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	25	RT-PCR
		presence of AFP mRNA		(6/12, 2/13)
Ijichi et al	2002	Dichotomized by the	Cohort	P value (0.014)	87	RT-PCR
		presence of AFP mRNA
I-Shyan et al	2004	Dichotomized by the	Cohort	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	81	RT-PCR
		presence of AFP mRNA		(17/19, 19/62)
Funaki et al	1997	Dichotomized by the	Case-control	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	14	RT-PCR
		presence of recurrence		(11/11, 2/3)2
Liu et al	1999	Dichotomized by the	Case-control	Case (D/n/D’/n’)	72	RT-PCR
		presence of recurrence		(7/19, 2/53)

¹The patients who received operation only were enrolled in the study.

²Prospective survival observation was also performed on eight cases of HCC who were operated on during this study, but as AFP mRNA was tested 2-3 d after operation, these eight cases were excluded.