Liver fat and a perturbed metabolic milieu: a consilience of factors driving liver cancer development

The effect of continuous infusion chemotherapy through femoral artery catheterization on GP73, AFP-L3, and safety efficacy in liver cancer patients

This study examines the impact of continuous infusion chemotherapy via femoral artery catheterization on Golgi protein 73 (GP73) and alpha fetoprotein heterogeneity (AFP-L3) in liver cancer patients. A retrospective analysis was conducted on 108 liver cancer patients treated from January 2020 to December 2022, divided into two groups: transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) and continuous infusion regional arterial chemotherapy via femoral artery catheterization (CIFAC), with 54 patients in each group. Serum tumor markers, liver function, adverse reactions, quality of life, and 1-year survival rate were analyzed and compared between the two groups of patients. Prior to treatment, no significant differences were observed in tumor markers, liver function, and quality of life between groups (P > 0.05). After 60 and 90 days, the CIFAC group exhibited significantly lower levels of GP73, AFP, and AFP-L3 compared to TACE (P < 0.05). Additionally, CIFAC patients had lower levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate transaminase (AST), indocyanine green (ICG15) (P < 0.05), reduced adverse reactions (nausea, vomiting, etc.), and higher Karnofsky scores (P < 0.05). The one-year survival rate of the CIFAC group was significantly higher than that of the TACE group (P < 0.05). Continuous infusion chemotherapy through femoral artery catheterization can help reduce serum tumor marker levels, improve liver function, and reduce adverse reactions in liver cancer patients.

Visceral and ectopic fat are more predictively associated with primary liver cancer than overall obesity from genetic sights: A Mendelian randomization study

Several observational studies have reported an association between obesity and primary liver cancer (PLC), while the causality behind this association and the comparison of the risk effects of different obesity indicators on PLC remain unclear. In this study, we performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses to assess the associations of genetically determined liver fat, visceral adipose tissue (VAT), and body mass index (BMI) with the risk of PLC. The summary statistics of exposures were obtained from two genome-wide association studies (GWASs) based on the UK Biobank (UKB) imaging cohort and the Genetic Epidemiology Research on Adult Health and Aging (GERA) cohort. GWAS summary statistics for PLC were obtained from FinnGen consortium R7 release data, including 304 PLC cases and 218 488 controls. Inverse-variance weighted (IVW) was used as the primary analysis, and a series of sensitivity analyses were performed to further verify the robustness of these findings. IVW analysis highlighted a significant association of genetically determined liver fat (OR per SD increase: 7.14; 95% CI: 5.10-9.99; P = 2.35E-30) and VAT (OR per SD increase: 5.70; 95% CI: 1.32-24.72; P = .020) with PLC but not of BMI with PLC. The findings were further confirmed by a series of MR methods. No evidence of horizontal pleiotropy between these associations existed. Our study suggested that genetically determined liver fat and VAT rather than BMI were associated with an increased risk of PLC, which suggested that visceral fat distribution is more predictive of the clinical risk of PLC than common in vitro measures.