Expression And Significance Of Human Leucocyte Antigen-E In Cervical Cancer

BackgroundCervical cancer is the most common gynecologic malignancies. Patients of early stage cervical cancer often have no obvious symptoms and signs, with the progression of the disease vaginal bleeding and discharge occur. In recent years, with the improvement of cervical cytology screening technology, the proportion of precancerous lesions increases. Although cervical cancer has a variety of pathological types, from point of the etiology of cervical cancer, squamous cell carcinoma, adenocarcinoma and adenosquamous cell carcinoma have a common feature which is the persistent infection of the high-risk HPV. Development from persistent infection of HPV to cervical cancer is largely caused by the disregulation of the immune system and the immune escape of tumor cells.Human leukocyte antigen-E (HLA-E), is a non-classical HLA-I molecule. It can be widely transcribed in human tissues and cell lines, but the expression of the protein on the cell surface is mainly confined to endothelial cells and immune cells. High expression of HLA-E has been found in some tumor tissues, but it has rarely been reported in cervical lesions. Thus we design this study to explore the expression of HLA-E in the cervical lesions and its possible role in the pathogenesis of the disease.ObjectiveTo investigate the expression of HLA-E in HSIL, cervical cancer and pericarcinous cervical tissues, and detect sHLA-E and SCC in the serum of patients with HSIL, cervical cancer and myoma to explore its possible role in the pathogenesis of cervical lesions and evaluate the potential clinical value of sHLA-E in the early diagnosis of cervical cancer.MethodsThe expression of HLA-E was assayed by immunohistochemical staining and the result was evaluated by H-score method. The level of sHLA-E was detected by ELISA and the level of SCC was detected by electrochemiluminescence immunoassay(ECLIA). Analyse the relationship between HLA-E expression or concentration of sHLA-E and the clinical pathological characters of cervical cancer. Compare all results to evaluate the potential value of sHLA-E in the diagnosis of cervial cancer.Results1. Immunohistochemical staining showed:The expression of HLA-E in cervical cancer and HSIL tissues were significantly higher than that in the adjacent normal cervical tissues (P<0.01), and the expression of HLA-E in cervical cancer tissues was also higher than that in the HSIL tissues (P<0.01). The expression of HLA-E was significantly related to clinical stage, tumor size and depth of myometrial invasion (P <0.05, all).2. ELISA results showed:the concentration of sHLA-E of cervical cancer patients and HSIL patients were higher than that of uterine fibroids patients (P<0.05). The level of sHLA-E has no relationship with the clinical and pathological features of cervical cancer (P>0.05, all).3. ROC curve analysis showed that the value of sHLA-E (AUC:0.803) in the diagnosis of cervical cancer is higher than that of SCC (AUC:0.783). Its diagnostic sensitivity and specificity for cervical cancer were 63.30% and 76.70%. And the diagnostic value of sHLA-E for cervical adennocarcinoma and HSIL were higher than that of SCC(P< 0.05, all).ConclusionsThe present study provides the evidence that HLA-E expression is of clinical significance for cervical cancer. It suggested that HLA-E may be involved in the immune escape of the pathogenesis of cervical cancer, but the specific molecular mechanism still remains to be discovered. The study also provides a potential serological marker for early diagnosis of cervical cancer, so that we can investigate further for clinical application.