PTX3 and hepatocellular carcinoma: The combination of PTX3 with AFP did not improve the performance of PTX3 for differentiating early-stage HCC from chronic hepatitis (AUC 0.957, Fig. 3A) but improved the performance for discriminating early-stage HCC from cirrhosis [AUC (95%CI) 0.936 (0.888–0.968), sensitivity 79.4%, specificity 98%, Fig. 3C] or chronic HBV infection without HCC [AUC (95%CI) 0.948 (0.918–0.970), sensitivity 79.4%, specificity 96.1%, Fig. 3C, Table S6].