The expressions and clinical significance of COX-2 and nm23-h1 in human colon cancer

Objective To study the expressions and clinical significance of COX-2 and nm23-h1 in human colon cancer, adenomatous polyps and normal para -cancer colon mucosa. Methods Eighty-five cases of colon cancer,18 cases of adenomas and 9 cases of para-cancer mucosa were accumulated and made into two tissue microarrays containing 72 dots and 104 dots,respectively. Expressions of COX-2 and nm23-h1 proteins were detected by immunohistochemical staining.Results Significant differences in the expressions of COX-2 were found among colon cancer, adenomas and benign para-cancer mucosa(P0.01).There was a positive correlation of COX-2 expression with histological grading, lymph node metastases, distance metastases and Dukes stages.The statistical significances were also found among colon cancer, adenomas and benign para-cancer mucosa in the expressions of nm23-h1 (P0.01), which showed that expression ratios in cancer and adenoma were higher than those in adjacent normal mucosa.In addition, expression of nm23-h1 had no correlation with other clinical pathological parameters but histological grading (P0.05), distance metastasis (P0.01) and Dukes stage (P0.05). Conclusion Abnormal expression of COX-2 may be the early events in colon carcinogenesis and play pivotal roles in the progression of colon cancer. The colon cancer cells with down-regulated expression of nm23-h1 will acquire a possibility of further differentiation and distant metastasis.