AFP and hepatocellular carcinoma: The recurrence-free interval of HCC patients with postoperative serum AFP mRNA positivity has been reported to be significantly shorter than that of HCC patients with postoperative negativity (53% versus 88% at 1 year, 37% versus 60% at 2 years, P = 0.014) [34] and (52.6% versus 81.8% at 1 year, 15.6% versus 54.5% at 2 years, and 0% versus 29.2% at 3 years, P < 0.001) [36].