Purpose: In this study, we established the inflammatory factor grade system (IFGs) based on the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) microenvironment to investigate the role of inflammatory factor grade (IFG) in predicting the prognosis of patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage I-II.
Patients and methods: We enrolled 87 HCC patients with AJCC stage I-II who underwent R0 resection between 2000 and 2012 and had paraffin-embedded specimens. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed to investigate the expression of 12 inflammatory factors and then to establish the IFGs (grade A or B) based on the IHC data. Subsequently, Kaplan-Meier and Cox univariate/multivariate survival analyses were performed to examine the potential prognostic significance.
Results: Higher IFG (IFG-B) is significantly associated with greater tumor size (P=0.037), and IFG-B predicts a worse disease-free survival (DFS, P<0.001). Moreover, a platelet count (PLT) ≤100×10⁹/L, tumor size ≥5 cm, poor tumor differentiation, and IFG-B are independent risk factors for DFS.
Conclusion: Overall, by establishing a grading system for the level of inflammatory factors in the HCC microenvironment, IFG-B can effectively predict poor DFS in AJCC stage I-II HCC patients after R0 resection.
Keywords: hepatocellular carcinoma, recurrence, prognosis, inflammation