The aim of this study is to establish and validate an effective prognostic nomogram in patients with AFP-negative hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The nomogram was based on a primary cohort that consisted of 419 patients with clinicopathologically diagnosed with HCC, all the data was gathered from 2008 to 2014 in Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. All the model factors were determined by univariate and multivariate Cox hazard analysis. The concordance index (C-index) and calibration curve were used to determine the predictive accuracy and discriminative ability of the nomogram, and compared with the TNM staging systems on HCC. Internal validation was assessed. An independent validation cohort contained 150 continuous patients from 2014 to 2015. Independent factors for overall survival (OS) were body mass index (BMI), tumor stage, distant metastases, HBs Ag, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT), and albumin (ALB), which were all contained into the nomogram. The calibration curve for probability of OS showed good agreement between prediction by nomogram and actual observation. The C-index of nomogram was 0.807 (95% CI: 0.770-0.844), which was superior to the C-index of AJCC TNM Stage (0.697). The AUC was 0.809(95%CI: 0.762-0.857). In the validation cohort, the nomogram still gave good discrimination (C-index: 0.866, 95% CI: 00.796-0.936; AUC: 0.832, 95%CI: 0.747-0.917) and good calibration. Decision curve analysis demonstrated that the nomogram was clinically useful. Moreover, patients were divided into three distinct risk groups for OS by the nomogram: low risk group, middle risk group and a high risk group, respectively. The proposed nomogram presents more accurate and useful prognostic prediction for patients with AFP-negative HCC.

Background. The pretreatment albumin and globulin ratio (AGR) was an inflammation-associated factor which was related to the overall survival in various malignancies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of AGR in patients with gastric cancer. Method. This retrospective study included 862 cases pathologically diagnosed with gastric cancer. All patients were randomly divided into the testing group (431 cases) and validation group (431 cases). The relationships of AGR with clinicopathologic characteristics and prognosis were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression methods. Results. In the testing group, the median overall survival was 26.90 months and the cutoff value of AGR was 1.50 based on R language. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that lower AGR was correlated with poorer overall survival. Multivariate analysis demonstrated that AGR was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (HR: 0.584, 95% CI = 0.351–0.973, and p = 0.039). In the validation group, the median overall survival was 24.10 months. Lower AGR (≤1.50) also had a significantly poorer overall survival by Kaplan-Meier analysis. According to multivariate analysis, the AGR was also confirmed to be an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (HR: 0.578, 95% CI = 0.373–0.897, and p = 0.015). Conclusions. Our study suggested that the pretreatment AGR could be a prognostic biomarker for overall survival in patients with gastric cancer.

To investigate the predictive value of chemokine CCL27 for identifying early stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients within a population seropositive for Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) capsid antigen-specific IgA (VCA-IgA). CCL27 in plasma samples from 104 NPC patients, 112 VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors, and 140 VCA-IgA–negative normal subjects was measured by ELISA. Expression of CCL27 in nasopharyngeal tissue from 20 VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors and 20 NPC patients was examined by immunohistochemical staining. Levels of CCL27 in the plasma of VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors (607.33 ± 218.81 pg/ml) were significantly higher than the levels in all NPC patients (437.09 ± 217.74, P = < 0.0001) and in the subset of patients with early stage NPC (463.85 ± 226.17, P = 0.0126). Plasma CCL27 levels were significantly lower in the VCA-IgA–negative normal subjects (358.22 ± 133.15 pg/ml) than in either the VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors (P < 0.0001) or the NPC patients (P = 0.0113). CCL27 protein was detected in 16 of 20 (80%) nasopharyngeal tissue samples from VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors and in 3 of 20 (15%) tumor tissue samples from NPC patients. There was no relationship between CCL27 levels and VCA-IgA titers or plasma EBV DNA content. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves demonstrated that plasma CCL27 levels had a sensitivity of 67.00%, a specificity of 73.10%, and an area under the ROC of 0.725 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.657–0.793) for distinguishing between NPC patients and VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors. Further analysis showed that CCL27 levels could distinguish between early stage NPC patients and VCA-IgA–positive healthy donors with an area under the ROC of 0.712 (95% CI: 0.560–0.865), a sensitivity of 59.80%, and a specificity of 84.60%. Chemokine CCL27 could successfully identify NPC patients within a VCA-IgA–positive population.