Nouso K, Uematsu S, Shiraga K, Okamoto R, Harada R, Takayama S, Kawai W, Kimura S, Ueki T, Okano N, Nakagawa M, Mizuno M, Araki Y, Shiratori Y. Regression of hepatocellular carcinoma during vitamin K administration. World J Gastroenterol 2005; 11(42): 6722-6724 [PMID: 16425373 DOI: 10.3748/wjg.v11.i42.6722]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Kazuhiro Nouso, MD, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine, Hiroshima City Hospital, 7-33 Motomachi, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-city, Hiroshima 730-8518, Japan. nouso@cc.okayama-u.ac.jp
Article-Type of This Article
Case Report
Open-Access Policy of This Article
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Kazuhiro Nouso, Shuji Uematsu, Kunihiro Shiraga, Ryoichi Okamoto, Ryo Harada, Shoko Takayama, Wakako Kawai, Shigeru Kimura, Toru Ueki, Nobuaki Okano, Masahiro Nakagawa, Motowo Mizuno, Yasuyuki Araki, Department of Internal Medicine, Hiroshima City Hospital, Hiroshima 730-8518, Japan
Yasushi Shiratori, Department of Medicine and Medical Science, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine and Dentistry, Okayama 700-8558, Japan
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to the work.
Correspondence to: Kazuhiro Nouso, MD, PhD, Department of Internal Medicine, Hiroshima City Hospital, 7-33 Motomachi, Naka-ku, Hiroshima-city, Hiroshima 730-8518, Japan. nouso@cc.okayama-u.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-82-221-2291 Fax: +81-82-223-1447
Received: January 24, 2005 Revised: February 15, 2005 Accepted: February 18, 2005 Published online: November 14, 2005
Abstract
An 85-year-old man with HCV infection and diabetes mellitus was diagnosed as having hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, 13 cm in diameter) based on high serum alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), AFP-L3, and des-γ-carboxy prothrombin levels as well as typical enhancement pattern on contrast-enhanced CT. The patient did not receive any interventional treatments because of advanced age and the advanced stage of HCC. He chose to take vitamin K, which was reported to suppress the growth of HCC in vitro. Three months after starting vitamin K, all three tumor markers were normalized and HCC was markedly regressed, showing no enhancement in the early arterial phase on CT. Here we present the report describing the regression of HCC during the administration of vitamin K.
