Expression of angiopoietin-2 and prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Objective To study the relationship between the expression of angiopoietins-2 (Ang-2) and prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after hepatic resection.Methods Sixty patients with primary liver cancer were retrospectively analyzed and the expression of Ang-2 in carcinoma tissues were assayed by immunohistochemical staining.The interrelationships among the expression of Ang-2,clinicopathological factors and the grade of differentiation of HCC cells were studied.The relationship between the expressions of Ang-2 and survival time was analysed.Results The expression rate of Ang-2 was 70％.Ang-2 staining had no correlation with clinicopathological factors (P ＜ 0.05),but it had a significant correlation with the grade of differentiation of HCC cells (x2 =5.424,P =0.025).Ang-2 of moderately and poorly differentiated HCC were higher (66.7％) than those of well-differentiated HCC.The disease-free survival rates of patients with high Ang-2 expression and low Ang-2 expression were 50％ (1-year),33.3％ (3-year),16.7％ (5-year) and 89.6％ (1-year),50.0％ (3-year),27.1％ (5-year),respectively.The disease-free survival of patients with high Ang-2 expression were significantly less than those of patients with low Ang-2 expression (x2 =6.477,P =0.021).Conclusion The expressions of Ang-2 are correlated with the grade of differentiation of HCC cells,but are not correlate with clinicopathological factors.The survivals of patients with Ang-2 high expression are lower than those of low expression.Ang-2 is a significant predictive factor for recurrence after hepatic resection in HCC patients. Key words: Angiopoietin-2 ; Carcinoma, hepatocellular; Immunohistochemistry