Preliminary study of alpha-fetoprotein in nonmalignant liver diseases. A clinico-biochemical evaluation.

This preliminary study was carried out to evaluate the behavior of AFP in 155 patients with benign diffuse liver diseases who underwent thorough clinical and laboratory evaluation. We found correlations between AFP and some clinical and biochemical parameters characteristic of liver diseases; serum glutamic oxalacetic transaminase (GOT) proved the most relevant (r = 0.27 p = 0.0004) and most reliable marker to predict AFP levels. 22.6% of the patients as a whole, 25.6% of the 86 cirrhotics and 18.8% of the 69 non-cirrhotics, had increased levels of AFP. Patients with active liver disease as measured by increased GOT, had higher AFP levels than patients with quiescent liver diseases (p = 0.0048), suggesting that cytolysis and/or regeneration plays a role in the increase in AFP. Elevation of the cut-off level was necessary to improve the specificity of AFP as a tumor marker. In our series, the cut-off of 9 ng/ml was exceeded by only 10% of the patients.