The diagnostic and prognostic value of H2AFY in hepatocellular carcinoma

Xuyang Ma,Li Zeng,Ying Ding

doi:10.1186/s12885-021-08161-4

Abstract

BackgroundThe potential correlation between H2AFY (also known as MacroH2A1) and the clinical characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients was analysed through gene expression profiles and clinical data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and the diagnostic and prognostic value of H2AFY in HCC was discussed.MethodsThe gene expression data of HCC and the corresponding clinical characteristics of HCC patients were downloaded from the TCGA database. The differences in H2AFY in normal liver tissues and HCC were analysed. The relationship between H2AFY and clinical characteristics was analysed by Wilcoxon signed-rank test, logistic regression and Kruskal-Wallis test. The Kaplan-Meier method and the Cox regression method were used to analyse the relationship between overall survival and clinical characteristics of the patients. An ROC curve was used to predict the diagnostic value of H2AFY in HCC. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used to analyse the pathway enrichment of H2AFY.ResultCompared with normal liver tissues, H2AFY was significantly highly expressed in HCC. H2AFY was positively correlated with the age, clinical stage, G stage (grade) and T stage (tumor stage) of liver cancer patients. Higher H2AFY expression predicted a poor prognosis in HCC patients. Cox regression analysis suggested that H2AFY was an independent risk factor for the prognosis of HCC patients. The ROC curve suggested that H2AFY had certain diagnostic value in HCC. GSEA suggested that H2AFY was correlated with lipid metabolism and a variety of tumour pathways.ConclusionOur study showed that H2AFY was significantly overexpressed in HCC. H2AFY may be a potential diagnostic and prognostic marker for HCC, and high expression of H2AFY predicts a poor prognosis in patients with HCC.

Highlights

The potential correlation between H2AFY and the clinical characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients was analysed through gene expression profiles and clinical data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and the diagnostic and prognostic value of H2AFY in HCC was discussed
Collection of genetic and clinical data Gene expression profile data of HCC patients were downloaded from the TCGA database, which included 50 samples of normal liver tissues and 374 HCC tissues (Workflow Type: HTSeq-FPKM)
The relationship between H2AFY and the clinical characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma patients Compared with normal liver tissues, H2AFY is more highly expressed in HCC, as shown in boxplots and the paired differential plot

Summary

Introduction

The potential correlation between H2AFY ( known as MacroH2A1) and the clinical characteristics of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients was analysed through gene expression profiles and clinical data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and the diagnostic and prognostic value of H2AFY in HCC was discussed. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common malignant tumour, usually occurs during the terminal stage of cirrhosis and is the third leading cause of cancer-related death [1, 2]. The most commonly used monitoring method for HCC is ultrasonography, which has high specificity and sensitivity. AFP (α-fetoprotein) is the most commonly used serum tumour marker for the diagnosis of HCC, but a retrospective study shows that the sensitivity of AFP in clinical practice is only approximately 60%, while its specificity is 80% [5, 6].

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