Expression And Clinical Pachologic Significance Of Tenascinc In Gastric Carcinoma

Objectives:To investigate the clinicopathological significance of detect the expression of Tenascin C in adenocarcinoma, high grade dysplasia, low grade dysplasia, intestinal metaplasia, chronic gastritis and normal mucosa. To investigate the significance of Tenascin C protein overexpression on prognostic evaluation of gastric carcinoma (GAC).Methods:Tenascin C protein was detected in 192 of adenocarcinoma, 25 of high grade dysplasia, 23 of low grade dysplasia, 42 of intestinal metaplasia, 23 of chronic gastritis and 23 of normal mucosa using immunohistochemical staining method. The correlation between Tenascin C overexpression and the prognosis of patients with GAC was also analyzed.Results:Positive staining for TNC in cancer cells was detected in 90 of the 192 cases, while 102 cases were negative. But the positive rate of TNC protein expression was no significantly between the gastric cancer tissues and non cancerous tissues (P>0.05). Further examination of the 86 TNC-positive gastric cancers showed intense staining for TNC in the cytoplasm of the cancer stroma. The positive rate of TNC expression was significantly higher in gastric cancer stroma tissues (44.8%,86/192) than in either normal mucosa (0%,0/21) or high grade dysplasia (4.0%,1/25) (P<0.01). The cancer cell TN-positive patients showed no significant correlation with other characteristics. The positive rate of stromal TNC in stomach adenocarcinoma was only significantly correlated with the lymph node of GAC (P=0.035). However, the overexpression of TNC protein was not related with gender, age, tumor size, degrees of differentiation, gross type, micro type or tumor location of patients with gastric cancer. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that gastric carcinoma patients with the cancer cell TNC overexpression had no significant correlation with overall survival rates (P=0.464). But found that gastric carcinoma patients with stromal TNC overexpression had lower overall survival rates than those without stromal TNC overexpression (P=0.000).ConclusionsTenascin C expression level of stromal is obviously higher in gastric carcinoma tissues than in benigh gastric tissues, significantly related with lymph node metastasis in patients with gastric carcinoma. The tumour stromal expression of Tenascin C may be a potential prognostic marker in gastric cancer, in so far as a diffuse stromal fibrillar staining pattern seems to indicate an increased risk of poor outcome.