{"doi":"10.15761/jts.1000446","title":"Serum levels of gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase in relation to HCC human biology and prognosis","abstract":"BACKGROUND AND AIM: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) biomarkers are limited, as even the best studied, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), is elevated in no more than 50% of HCC patients. The aim was to evaluate several serum liver function tests in relation to survival and tumor characteristics in a large cohort of Turkish HCC patients. METHODS: We retrospectively examined the serum levels of gamma glutamyl transpeptidase (GGT) in relation to patient survival. RESULTS: Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that only GGT and albumin amongst liver function tests, were significantly associated with survival. Survival worsened with increase in GGT levels semi-quantitatively. Increase in GGT levels was also found to significantly correlate with an increase in maximum tumor diameter from 4.5 to 7 cm, a 20-fold increase in serum alpha-fetoprotein level, an increase in tumor multifocality from 20 to 54% of patients, and a doubling in percent of patients with portal vein thrombosis (PVT) from 20 to 40%. Serum GGT levels also showed significant survival differences for patients with low AFP levels. A doublet combination of serum GGT with albumin levels was associated with higher hazard ratios in a Cox regression analysis, as compared with single parameter GGT. The combination parameter pair was also prognostically useful in the low-AFP patient subcohort and was associated with significant differences in patient tumor characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: Serum GGT levels and especially combination serum GGT plus albumin levels, were significantly associated both with HCC patient survival and tumor aggressiveness characteristics, regardless of AFP levels in a large Turkish cohort. This might be especially useful since the majority of HCC patients do not have elevated levels of AFP.","journal":"Journal of Translational Science","year":2021,"id":187911,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":17,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8579,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":748130,"name":"Hikmet Akkız","orcid":"0000-0001-9745-8875","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748916,"name":"Bag HG","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748131,"name":"Ümit Karaoğullarından","orcid":"0000-0003-4309-7845","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748132,"name":"Kendal Yalçın","orcid":"0000-0003-2137-7934","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748133,"name":"Nazım Ekin","orcid":"0000-0001-5302-8953","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748134,"name":"Ayşegül Özakyol","orcid":"0000-0003-0152-8651","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748135,"name":"Engin Altıntaşž","orcid":"0000-0003-0796-1456","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748136,"name":"Yasemin Balaban","orcid":"0000-0002-0901-9192","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":531714,"name":"Cem Şimşek","orcid":"0000-0002-7037-5233","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748137,"name":"Ahmet UYANIKOĞLU","orcid":"0000-0003-4881-5244","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748138,"name":"Ayhan Balkan","orcid":"0000-0002-6475-9847","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748917,"name":"Sedef Kuran","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748139,"name":"Oğuz Üsküdar","orcid":"0000-0003-2789-1467","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748140,"name":"Yakup Ülger","orcid":"0000-0003-2999-9308","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748918,"name":"Buhara Guney","orcid":null,"position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":748141,"name":"Anıl Delik","orcid":"0000-0002-6443-9392","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":420765,"name":"Brian I. Carr","orcid":"0000-0002-6111-5077","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":50,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:49:05.976005Z","pmid":"34540270","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}