Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2019. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 21, 2019; 25(19): 2365-2372
Published online May 21, 2019. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v25.i19.2365
Change in arterial tumor perfusion is an early biomarker of lenvatinib efficacy in patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma
Hidekatsu Kuorda, Tamami Abe, Yudai Fujiwara, Takuya Okamoto, Miki Yonezawa, Hiroki Sato, Kei Endo, Takayoshi Oikawa, Kei Sawara, Yasuhiro Takikawa
Hidekatsu Kuorda, Tamami Abe, Yudai Fujiwara, Takuya Okamoto, Miki Yonezawa, Hiroki Sato, Kei Endo, Takayoshi Oikawa, Kei Sawara, Yasuhiro Takikawa, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Iwate Medical University, Morioka, Iwate 020-8505, Japan
Author contributions: Kuroda H drafted the manuscript, and assisted with data analysis; Abe T participated in design and oversight of the study, and was involved with data collection; Fujiwara Y participated in design of the study, and was involved with data collection; Okamoto T was involved with data collection, and assisted with data analysis; Yonezawa M was involved with data collection, and assisted with data analysis; Sato H was involved with data collection, and assisted with data analysis; Endo K drafted the manuscript, and assisted with data analysis; Oikawa T participated in study design and performed statistical analysis; Sawara K participated in design of the study, was involved with data collection; Takikawa Y drafted the manuscript, and assisted with data analysis; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the local Ethics Committee of the Iwate Medical University (MH2018-533).
Clinical trial registration statement: The clinical trial is registered at clinical hospital center Iwate medical trial registry. The registration identification number is MH2018-533.
Informed consent statement: All study participants, or their legal guardian, provided written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors of this manuscript having no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Data sharing statement: There is no additional data available.
CONSORT 2010 statement: The manuscript was prepared according to CONSORT 2010 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hidekatsu Kuroda, MD, PhD, Doctor, Division of Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, Iwate Medical University, Uchimaru 19-1, Morioka, Iwate 020-8505, Japan. hikuro@iwate-med.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-19-6515111 Fax: +81-19-6526664
Received: February 10, 2019
Peer-review started: February 12, 2019
First decision: March 20, 2019
Revised: April 12, 2019
Accepted: April 29, 2019
Article in press: April 29, 2019
Published online: May 21, 2019
Core Tip

Core tip: Lenvatinib is one of the first-line tyrosine kinase inhibitors used for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In the present study, we evaluated the potential of early changes in the time-intensity curve (TIC) of arterial phase on contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) as early imaging biomarkers of lenvatinib efficacy. The rate of change for TIC parameters showed precisely reflect the therapeutic effects. CEUS may be useful for the early prediction of tumor response to lenvatinib therapy in patients with unresectable HCC.