Prognostic significance of p34 cdc2 expression in tongue squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

We evaluated the prognostic significance of p34 cdc2 expression in 50 tongue squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) using immunohistochemical methods. The p34 cdc2 protein was expressed in 33 cases of 50 tumor tissues (66.0%), compared with 15 cases of 42 controlled epithelia (35.7%). The expression of p34 cdc2 was significantly correlated with the histological grade of tongue carcinoma ( P<0.01). In addition, on evaluation of prognosis of tumor, the p34 cdc2 protein was overexpressed in recurrent tumors or in those with lymph node metastasis. Statistics showed a significant reduction in the 5-year accumulative survival rate of p34 cdc2 positive cases compared with p34 cdc2 negative cases ( P<0.01). Namely, the p34 cdc2 positive patients had worse prognosis. The results suggested that the expression of p34 cdc2 suited to the histological grade might reflect the malignant degree of tongue carcinoma biologically. Therefore, the evaluation of p34 cdc2 expression was of benefit in elucidating the nature of tumor malignancy and the prognostic prediction of tongue SCC.