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Review
. 2023 Sep 15:13:1231420.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1231420. eCollection 2023.

Beyond liver cancer, more application scenarios for alpha-fetoprotein in clinical practice

Chenyu Ma  1 , Yuexinzi Jin  1 , Yuhan Wang  2 , Huaguo Xu  1 , Jiexin Zhang  1
Affiliations
Review

Beyond liver cancer, more application scenarios for alpha-fetoprotein in clinical practice

Chenyu Ma et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is a commonly used clinical biomarker. Before 1970, the two-way agar diffusion method was mainly used, and the specificity of AFP in the diagnosis of primary liver cancer was satisfactory. However, its positivity rate was not very high. The diagnostic value of AFP is changing with the evolution of detection methods. Here, we performed a literature search to identify English-language publications. The search was performed from January 2015 to April 2023 using the PubMed database and the following terms in [Titles/Abstracts]: alpha-fetoprotein, clinical practice, detection, etc. The references of retrieved articles were also screened to broaden the search. Studies referring to liver cancer and AFP detection methods were excluded. In this review, several clinical application scenarios for AFP were systematically reviewed, and its potential detection value in the future was discussed.

Keywords: alpha-fetoprotein; clinical application; fetal diseases; pregnancy; tumor.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Future research theme for the clinical applications of AFP in non-HCC diseases.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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