AFP and hepatocellular carcinoma: Meanwhile, ROC curves showed that the ability of the AFP to distinguish early‐stage HCC patients from normal controls or non‐HCC controls with AUC of 0.756 or 0.658 was obviously higher than that of AFP to distinguish early‐stage HCC patients from at‐risk controls or LC controls (AUC of 0.560 or 0.564; Fig. 3G,H).