We thank Chen and Lin for their interest in our article.1 They raised concerns about the comparison between α-fetoprotein (AFP) and the 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC)-based weighted diagnostic (wd)-scores,2 a debate worth further clarification. First, it should be clarified that Chen and Lin’s description did not represent the overall picture of the wd-scores.1 The performance measures mentioned by Chen and Lin were specifically for distinguishing early hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and non-HCC (including not just chronic hepatitis B (CHB) virus infection but also benign liver lesions, liver cirrhosis (LC) and healthy controls) in the validation set. Notably, the 5hmC-based wd-scores consistently outperformed AFP in both training and validation sets for HCC versus non-HCC, early HCC versus CHB/LC, and early HCC versus controls (healthy individuals, benign liver lesions). Compared with AFP alone, the 5hmC-based wd-scores performed especially well when detecting early …

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回复“基于 5-羟甲基胞嘧啶的 wd-scores 是否真的优于甲胎蛋白对肝细胞癌的早期诊断？”

感谢 Chen 和 Lin 对我们文章的关注。1 他们对甲胎蛋白 (AFP) 和基于 5-羟甲基胞嘧啶 (5hmC) 的加权诊断 (wd) 评分之间的比较提出了担忧，2 值得进一步澄清的辩论. 首先，需要澄清的是，Chen 和 Lin 的描述并不代表 wd-scores 的整体情况。 1 Chen 和 Lin 提到的性能指标专门用于区分早期肝细胞癌 (HCC) 和非 HCC（不仅包括验证集中的慢性乙型肝炎 (CHB) 病毒感染以及良性肝脏病变、肝硬化 (LC) 和健康对照)。值得注意的是，在 HCC 与非 HCC、早期 HCC 与 CHB/LC 的训练和验证集中，基于 5hmC 的 wd 分数始终优于 AFP，和早期 HCC 与对照（健康个体，良性肝脏病变）。与单独的 AFP 相比，基于 5hmC 的 wd-scores 在早期检测时表现特别好……