Evaluation of Lipid Profile In Liver Cancer

Abstract

The lipid profile of ten liver cancer patients were compared with the lipid profile of ten normal subjects at the Chemical Pathology Department of the University Teaching Hospital Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State Nigeria., with a view to establish whether liver cancer have significant effect on lipid profile. The parameters examined were Total Cholesterol (TC), Triglyceride (TG), High density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), Low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and Atherogenic risk ratio (TC:HDL-C). The results obtained  were subjected to statistical analysis to examine the level of Significance difference between lipid profile of liver cancer patients and those of normal subjects. The results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) under 0.05 (5%) probability with F-table value at degree of freedom 1, 18 being  4.41 showed that level of TC (F-calculated = 5.56) and LDL-C (F-calculated = 6.73) were significant while the level of HDL-C (F-calculated = 1.78), TG (F -calculated = 0.70) and TC:HDL-C (F-calculated 0.02) were not significant . The Duncan’s multiple range test also showed that the difference between means of TC (DBM = 1.114) of the liver cancer patients and the normal subjects was significant when compared to 0.993 Least Significant Range (LSR). Similarly the difference between means of LDL-C (DBM = 0.946) of the liver cancer patients and the normal subjects was significant when compared to 0.766 LSR. However, there were no significant difference in the DBM and LSR of TG, HDL-C and TC: HDL-C since DBM was less than LSR in those cases. The results of Students T- test from the statistical analysis conformed to the results of the ANOVA and Duncan’ Multiple Range Test.  Thus, from the statistical analyses, it could be concluded that liver cancer have significant effect on the TC and the LDL-C with little or no effect on the TG, the HDL-C and the Atherogenic risk ratio of the subjects examined in this study. Since high level of LDL-C indicates high risk of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD), it was therefore recommended that lipid profile of liver cancer patients should be monitored to prevent CHD among liver cancer patients.