CCL2 and cyclic hematopoiesis: We performed conventional sandwich ELISA to quantify serum MCP-1 levels and observed significantly higher MCP-1 concentration in the HCC patients (median = 0.47 ng/ml; IQR, 0.29–0.80 ng/ml) relative to CH (median = 0.38 ng/ml; IQR, 0.17–0.75 ng/ml; p = 0.026) and AC (median = 0.28 ng/ml; IQR, 0.16–0.55 ng/ml; p<0.001) groups (Figure 1A).