Moreover, Egfl7 also exhibited an advantage in the aspect of sensitivity compared with some recently reported serum markers for distinguishing early HCC from CLD such as GPC3 (sensitivity of 55%) [22], GP73 (sensitivity of 62%) [53] and DKK1 (sensitivity ranged from 54.8 to 73.8%) [24, 25]. Here, DKK1 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.