Pan HZ, Dong AB, Wang L, Tan SS, Yang Q, Tong XY, Liang J, Wang JR. Significance of relaxin-2 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma: relation with clinicopathological parameters.
Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci 2013;
17:1095-1101. [PMID:
23661524]
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Abstract
BACKGROUND
A number of putative roles, including the modulation of tumor growth, neovascularization, metastasis and oncogenic progression, have been correlated to relaxin-2 overexpression. However, the clinical significance of relaxin-2 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of relaxin-2 in HCC and determine its correlation with tumor progression and prognosis.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
180 HCC patients who had undergone curative liver resection were selected and immunohistochemistry was performed to analyze relaxin-2 expression in the respective tumors.
RESULTS
Immunohistochemistry confirmed relaxin-2 overexpression in HCC tissues compared with their adjacent nonneoplastic tissues (p < 0.01). Additionally, immunostaining showed more relaxin-2 positive cells in the higher tumor grade (III) than in the lower tumor stage (I, II; p = 0.026). Moreover, HCC patients with high relaxin-2 expression were significantly associated with lower 5-year overall survival (p < 0.01) and lower 5-year disease-free survival (p < 0.01), respectively. Furthermore, immunostaining showed more relaxin-2 positive cells in the tumor recurrence (ETR) patients than non-ETR patients (p = 0.001). The Cox proportional hazards model further showed that relaxin-2 was an independent poor prognostic factor for both 5-year disease-free survival (hazards ratio [HR] = 1.872, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.18-5.146, p = 0.023) and 5-year overall survival (HR = 3.637, CI = 1.443-7.15, p = 0.001) in HCC.
CONCLUSIONS
Our data suggest for the first time that the overexpression of relaxin-2 protein in HCC tissues is of predictive value on tumor progression and poor prognosis.
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