The clinical significance of B7-H4 expression in bladder cancer

Abstract

Objective To investigate the expression of B7-H4 and its clinical pathological characteristics in bladder cancer tissue and its relationship with the prognosis in bladder cancer patients.Methods From March 2007 to March 2008,30 patients with bladder cancer were recruited.B7-H4 protein in serum was detected by enzyme immunoassay (ELISA) while the content of B7-H4 protein in the serun of patients with bladder benign tumors and the normal population were detected as control.The expression of B7-H4 mRNA was detected in the fresh tissues of 30 patients with bladder cancer by real time quantitative PCR and the expression of B7-H4 mRNA in the adjacent tissues of bladder cancer and bladder benign tumors were detected as control.The B7-H4 expression levels in the tissue samples of 70 patients with bladder cancer was detected by immunohistochemical staining.Results B7-H4 protein [(45.25±8.93) μg/L] in serum of bladder cancer patients was significantly higher than those with bladder benign tumors [(34.41±6.91)μg/L] as well as the normal tissue [(31.20±6.28)μg/L] (P＜0.01).B7-H4 mRNA expression in bladder cancer tissue was significantly higher than that of the adjacent tissue of bladder cancer (P＜0.01),and the expression of B7-H4 mRNA in the adjacent tissues of bladder cancer was significantly higher than that of the bladder benign tumors (P＜0.01).The positive rate of B7-H4 protein in 70 cases of bladder cancer tissues was 69％,including 77％ highly expressed.The positive rate in bladder cancer patients was significantly higher than that of the bladder benign tissue (P＜0.01).The expression of B7-H4 protein were significantly correlated with TNM classification and distant metastasis of bladder cancer (P＜0.05),but no significant difference was detected in term of gender,age,histological type,clinical stage (P＞0.05).The survival rate of the patients with highly B7-H4 expression was lower than those with low B7-H4 expression (P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The expression of B7-H4 in bladder cancer was correlated with the metastasis and prognosis,and B7-H4 could be used as an indicator of the biological behavior of bladder cancer and the prognosis. Key words: Bladder tumor; B7-H4 molecule; Prognosis; Tumor metastasis