Purpose
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic significance of the ratio of CD44 epithelial variant transcript to CD44 hematopoietic variant transcript in gastric adenocarcinoma.
Methods
We performed reverse transcription-polymerase chain reactions for CD44 expression in tumor tissue and adjacent noncancerous mucosa obtained from the surgical specimens of 35 patients with gastric adenocarcinoma. We determined the
epithelial/hematopoietic variant (E/H) ratio in each specimen. We also probed the difference between the tumor (T) E/H and noncancerous mucosa (N) E/H and analysed its correlation with clinicopathological parameters including Lauren’s
classification,
the status of differentiation, the depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, perineural invasion, clinical stage and disease-free survival rate.
Results
The mean of the E/H ratio was higher in the tumor tissue than in the adjacent noncancerous mucosa (0.13 vs. 0.09), but lacked statistical significance. The T(E/H) ratio demonstrated significant correlations with Lauren’s classification (P＜0.05)
and
differentiation (P＜0.05). There was no significant correlation between the T(E/H) ratio and other clinicopathological parameters. The T(E/H)-N(E/H) in patients with intestinal type was 0.15±0.24, as compared with -0.08±0.40 in patients with
diffuse
type (P＜0.05). In patients with differentiated tumor, the T(E/H)-N(E/H) was 0.15±0.25, as compared with 0.07±0.39 in patients with undifferentiated tumor (P＜0.05). There was no difference in the disease-free survival between the patients with
higher
T(E/H)-N(E/H) and those with lower T(E/H)-N(E/H) (22 months vs. 19 months in median).
Conclusion
The prognostic significance of CD44 E/H ratio in gastric adenocarcinoma is still unclear. However, our results suggest that CD44E/H ratio is a potential prognostic factor in patients with differentiated gastric adenocarcinoma.
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