Time courses of PIVKA-II and AFP levels after hepatic artery embolization and hepatic artery infusion against hepatocellular carcinoma: relation between the time course and tumor necrosis.

We examined 35 untreated patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma who exhibited positivity for both plasma PIVKA-II and serum AFP, and studied the weekly course of these markers from the pre-TAE or -HAI period to the third week of treatment. We correlated changes in these markers with the tumor necrosis rate and the time course on X-ray CT images. One week after TAE, the tumor necrosis rate and the time course of PIVKA-II showed a significant correlation (r = 0.7), while the correlation was between the time course of AFP and the tumor necrosis rate was insignificant (r = 0.2). At two and three weeks after TAE, both the time course of AFP and PIVKA-II showed significant correlations with the tumor necrosis rate. In 16 patients with tumor necrosis rates of not less than 90%, the mean of the actual half-life (AHL) of PIVKA-II was 3.2 days, the shortest was 1.83 days, and 75% of all AHLs clustered from two days to four days, while the mean and shortest AHLs of AFP were six days and 2.98 days, respectively, exhibiting a broader distribution. On the other hand, in three out of the nine cases of hepatocellular carcinoma complicated with portal tumor thrombi, PIVKA-II increased after HAI in spite of a reduction in tumor size. It was suggested that the PIVKA-II level requires careful interpretation in cases of portal vein obstruction after intensive hepatic arterial infusion of anticancer agents.