Measurement of body mass index and metabolic syndrome among indigenous population in Jayapura City, Papua Province Indonesia

Abstract

Introduction: Epithelial—mesenchymal transition (EMT) is crucial for tumour progression and metastasis. Snail family members, including snail, slug and smuc, are the transcription factors that repress E-cadherin expression and induce epithelial—mesenchymal transition in some tumour tissues. In this study, we evaluated the expression of snail family proteins in cervical squamous cancers. Methods: A series of 144 samples, comprising 28 cases of normal cervical tissues and 116 cases of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), were used for analysis. The expression of snail, slug, smuc, Ecadherin and vimentin was assessed in the tissues by immunohistochemistry, and were statistically analysed by SPSS13.0. Results: Down-regulation of E-cadherin was associated with up-regulation of vimentin in patients with cervical carcinoma. Furthermore, we observed that decreased E-cadherin and increased vimentin were strongly linked to adverse prognostic factors, including histologic differentiation and lymph node metastasis. There was significantly difference for snail and smuc nuclear expression of the SCC tissues with occurrence of EMT and the SCC tissues without occurrence of EMT. Moreover, the nuclear expression of snail was positively associated with lymph node metastasis and histological differentiation of the SCC; additionally, no significant associations were found between nuclear smuc and the clinicopathologic variables except lymph node metastasis. While the expression of both slug and the cytoplasmic expression of smuc was not related with tumour size, histological differentiation, lymph node metastasis or stages of the SCC. Furthermore, the nuclear of expression snail and smuc were closely associated with a decrease of Ecadherin expression and an increase of vimentin in cervical squamous cell cancer. Conclusion: Snail and smuc, but not slug, might contribute to the onset of EMT in SCC. Suggesting that inhibiting the expression of snail and smuc might be a potential therapeutic target for the metastasis and invasion of the cervical carcinoma.