Relationship between Expression of MMPs in Invasiveness and Metastasis of Gastric Carcinoma as well as Patients Survival.

Objective To investigate the MMPs expression in gastric carcinoma and their correlation with invasiveness and metastasis as well as patients survival.Methods Immunohistochemistry tecnique were use to examined the expression of MMP-2,MMP-9 and MMP-3 in 105 specimens of gastric carcinoma as well as 60 specimens with lymph node metastasis.Results The positive rate of MMP-2、MMP-9、MMP-3 expression in lymph node metastasis(90.0%、88.3%、85.0% respectively)were significantly higher than that in gastric carcinoma tissues(72.4%、74.3%、71.4%respectively).No significant correlations were found between MMP-2,MMP-9,MMP-3 expression and tumour differentiation.In contrast,the intensity of MMP-2,MMP-9,MMP-3 staining in tumour cells correlated significantly with depth of tumour infiltration(T-stage),lymph node metastasis(N-stage),distant metastasis(M-stage),and UICC stage.Conclusion Expression of MMP-2,MMP-9,MMP-3 is strongly associated with tumour progression and lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer.Therefore MMP-9 staining may be clinically useful as predictor of patients survival.