Objective.

The purpose of this work has been to review the scientific literature regarding the role of regucalcin expression in the liver.

Method.

A bibliographic search was carried out on the PubMed database. Eighty-nine articles were found. After analyzing their content and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, a total of 9 articles were included.

Results.

It was determined that SMP30 expression is significantly higher in the liver compared to other tissues such as lungs, spleen, myocardium, prostate and skin (P < 0.05). It was observed, after obtaining samples from 137 patients (30 normal liver controls, 10 with hepatitis B, 49 with liver cirrhosis and 48 with hepatocellular carcinoma) that SMP30 expression was 100% in all tissues adjacent to the liver except for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which showed only 81% of protein expression. On serum regucalcin concentrations it was observed, that 3 different groups with different concentrations of SMP30: control group (1.72 ng/ mL), patients with chronic hepatitis (3.76 ng/mL) and patients with liver failure (5.46 ng/ mL) patients with acute liver failure had higher concentrations of SMP30 than patients with hepatitis B (P< 0.01), as well as the serum concentrations of the latter showed to be higher than in healthy patients (P< 0.01). On the proliferation of HepG2 cells it has been shown that the addition of exogenous SMP30 suppresses the elevation of cell numbers, thus revealing that HepG2 cell proliferation was suppressed with the physiological levels of SMP30 present in serum in vitro.

Conclusion.

Regucalcin could play a key role in survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, as well as its possible role as a protective protein for apoptosis in HepG2 cells.

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