AFP: alpha-fetoprotein; BCLC: Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer (BCLC) staging system; HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma.
3.3 The Treg cell proportion in peripheral blood of 28 patients with HCC before and at 10 and 30 days after GSMs-TACE
In this study, we observed the Treg cell proportion in HCC patients before operation, at 10 and 30 days after GSMs-TACE, since the normal cycle of interventional therapy was 30 days. Results indicated that the Treg cell proportion after GSMs-TACE showed a slightly decreasing trend at the initial stage of operation (from 11.78±1.76% before operation to 8.85 ± 1.23% at 10 days after operation), and then a slightly slow uptrend (10.27 ± 1.28% at 30 days after operation), which indicated the necessity of the next cycle of TACE therapy. Compared with before operation, the Treg cell proportion in peripheral blood was statistically significantly lower at 10 and 30 days after operation (P < 0.05) (Table 4, Fig. 2). Moreover, the BCLC subgroup analysis showed that the peripheral Treg proportion of both stage B and stage C patients decreased significantly at 10 days after GSMs-TACE compared with before (P < 0.05) (Table 5). The Treg cell proportion in stage C patients at 30 days after operation was still significantly lower than that before operation. The Treg cell proportion in stage B patients increased at 30 days after TACE compared with 10 days after operation, but was not significantly different from that before TACE (P = 0.14).
Table 4 Comparison of peripheral Treg cell proportions in 28 HCC patients before and after GSMs -TACE.