Expression and clinical significance of GRIM-19 in epithelial ovarian carcinoma

Abstract

To investigate the expression and clinicopathological features of gene associated with retinoid-interferon mortality-19 (GRIM-19) in epithelial ovarian carcinoma. The expression of GRIM-19 gene in tissues from 138 cases of epithelial ovarian carcinoma, 102 cases of benign ovarian epithelial tumor and 46 cases of normal ovarian tissues were detected by Immunohistochemistry and Western blot methods. Assembled clinical survival data were analyzed with Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression models. The expression level of GRIM-19 in epithelial ovarian carcinoma (3.4 ± 2.0) was lower than that in benign ovarian tumor tissues (4.7 ± 2.9) and that in normal ovarian tissues (7.5 ± 2.2; P < 0.01). The level of GRIM-19 expression was related to the survival time of epithelial ovarian carcinoma patients by Kaplan-Meier analysis (P = 0.002). The shorter survival time of epithelial ovarian carcinoma patients was significantly associated with the level of GRIM-19 expression (P = 0.001), clinical stage (P = 0.001), volume of ascites (P = 0.023) and the largest diameter of the primary tumor lesion (P = 0.044) by Cox regression models. The low expression of GRIM-19 in the epithelial ovarian carcinoma suggests that GRIM-19 may be a key gene involved in its carcinogenesis. The expression level of GRIM-19 may be also an independent prognostic factor for epithelial ovarian carcinoma patients.