Prognostic significance of hepatoma-up-regulated protein expression in patients with urinary bladder transitional cell carcinoma

Hepatoma-Up-Regulated Protein (HURP), for the detection of urinary bladder transitional cell carcinoma (TCC). In this study, the expression of HURP in 57 voided urine specimens was determined by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. HURP value was correlated with,a variety of clinical parameters, including sex, age, tumor grade, stage, multiplicity, tumor shape and recurrence/metastasis during the follow-up period. The detection rate of HURP was 60.7% (17 out of 28) in voided urine of patients with TCC, 5.9% (1 out of 17) in non-TCC urological benign disease and 0% (0 out of 12) in healthy volunteers. HURP positivity (defined as above 0.1 cutoff value) was detected in 83.6% (92 out of 110) TCC specimens, 4.3% (1 out of 23) of non-TCC urinary cancer and 0% (0 out of 15) of benign urological disease. No relationship was found between the level of HURP and the above-mentioned clinical parameters other than recurrence of TCC patients. A higher level of tissue HUPP was found in the patients having recurrence (Mann-Whitney U-test, p=0.027).