Autoantibodies to Golgi proteins in hepatocellular carcinoma: case report and literature review

Abstract

Anti-Golgi antibodies are a type of anticytoplasmic autoantibody rarely found during routine examination of pathological samples. Although they have been mostly associated with connective autoimmune diseases, they are also present in other clinical conditions, including few cases of liver dysfunction. In this report, we describe for the first time the presence of high titres of anti-Golgi antibodies in a patient with virus-C-induced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). By immunofluorescence, the patient's serum yielded a characteristic fluorescence pattern that corresponded to the presence of Golgi reactivity. On immunoblot, the serum disclosed three reactive bands of approximately 105, 79 and 59 kDa. In addition, we retrospectively analysed the presence of anti-Golgi antibodies in sera from 95 patients with chronic hepatitis C, in 32 patients with chronic hepatitis B, in 35 patients with HCC associated with either virus C (27 cases), virus B (five cases) or both virus C and virus B (three cases), and in 18 patients with HCC induced by alcoholism. We found an additional positive patient, beside the patient presented herein, with HCC induced by B virus infection, whereas all patients without HCC were negative. Thus, the overall frequency of anti-Golgi antibodies in our series of patients with virus-induced HCC was 5.5% (two cases out of 36). The mechanism involved in the appearance of anti-Golgi antibodies in HCC is discussed, along with a review of the reported cases of liver diseases associated with the appearance of Golgi autoantibodies.