Role of sex steroid receptors in pathobiology of hepatocellular carcinoma

Table 5 Studies on correlation of estrogen receptor and androgen receptor expression with clinical and pathological parameters in HCC patients

Receptor protein/mRNA expression	Clinical parameter	n	Country	Salient findings	Yr	Reference
ER protein	Serum alpha-fetoprotein, carcinoembryonic antigen, HBV profile, tumor histology	30	Japan	No correlation with any parameter	1986	[13]
ER and AR protein	Serum alpha fetoprotein, HBV markers, histopathology	19	Japan	No correlation	1989	[15]
ER protein	Sex, age, alcohol abuse, underlying liver disease, hepatic functions	66	Japan	No correlation	1990	[34]
	Tumor size, hepatic resection			Large tumor size and higher rate of resection in ER-
	Histopathology			No differences in ER+ and ER-
	Operative mortality, tumor recurrence, long-term survival rate			Similar in ER+ and ER-
ER and AR protein	Intrahepatic recurrence	78	Japan	AR expression strongly associated with intrahepatic recurrence. Weak association with ER expression	1995	[72]
ER protein	Survival after curative resection	28	Germany	Negative effect of an ER+ tumor on patient survival after curative resection	1997	[42]
Wild type and variant ER mRNA	Survival	96	Italy	Significantly long survival in patients with wild type ERs than variant ERs	2000	[55]
AR protein	Recurrence rate	45	Japan	Significantly higher recurrence rates in AR+ group than AR-	1989	[15]
	Survival rate			Significantly better survival rates in AR- patients than in AR+
AR protein	Tumor size	43	Spain	AR expression was significantly related to smaller tumor size	1995	[69]
	Tumor recurrence			Higher tumor recurrence rates in surrounding tissues of AR+ than AR-
AR protein	Tumor size and survival time	32	China	Survival rate correlated inversely with the levels of AR expression	1998	[70]
				AR levels had positive correlation with the tumor size