Clinical significance of expression of APRIL mRNA in peripheral blood of 63 esophageal squamous cell cancer cases

Objective To detect the levels of APRIL mRNA and CEA(Human carcinoembryonic antigen)mRNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells(PBMCs) in patients with esophageal carcinoma and in healthy controls by real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction(FQ-RT PCR),and to explore the relationship between expression of APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA in peripheral blood and the clinical factors,such as pathological stage and metastasis,and its clinical significance.Methods Real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction method was used to detect the expression of APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA in PBMCs 3 days before operation in 63 esophageal carcinoma cases and the result was compared with that in healthy controls(n=20).The correlations between APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA expression and the factors such as clinical pathology and metastasis were analyzed by SPSS11.0 software.Results The positive rates of CEA mRNA and APRIL mRNA in PBMC of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma(SCC)patients were 68.3% and 65.1% respectively.If the expression of at least one among APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA was defined as positive,the positive rate of esophageal SCC was 81.1% when both APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA were detected simultaneously.There was positive correlation between APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA expression levels in PBMCs.Conclusions Detecting APRIL mRNA and CEA mRNA by RT-PCR can increase the sensitivity of exeminotion of peripheral blood in esophageal SCC,offering the information of malignant biological behaviour of the tumor,and helping to judge the prognosis and to monitor therapeutic effectiveness.