The expression of MEKK3 and TRAIL in cervical lesions

Objective To study the expression of MEKK3 and TRAIL in cervical lesions and its correlation,and to explore the relationship between the expression and clinicopathologic features and prognosis.Methods The expression of MEKK3 and TRAIL was detected in 107 cases of cervical carcinoma,86 cases of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia and 35 cases of chronic cervicitis by immunohistochemical En Vision method and tissue microarrays,the prognostic analysis was made in 44 cases who were followed-up for 3 years.Results The expression of MEKK3 increased significantly from samples of chronic cervicitis and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia to cervical carcinoma(P0.05).The positive rate of TRAIL in samples of cervical carcinoma was lower than that in chronic cervicitis and cervical intraepithelial neoplasia(P0.05).The positive rates of MEKK3 were closely related to FIGO stage,infiltration depth and lymphode metastasis of cervical carcinoma(P0.05)rather than to age,histological type and grading(P0.05).However,the positive rate of TRAIL was only related to histological grading of cervical carcinoma(P0.05).The expression of MEKK3 was negatively correlated with the expression of TRAIL(P0.05).Log-Rank analysis revealed that it was the expression of MEKK3 not TRAIL which was associated with the survival of patients with cervical cancer(P0.05).Conclusions The abnomal expression of MEKK as well as TRAIL play critical roles in the occurrence and development of cervical carcinoma,which can be served as molecular markers of early diagnosis of cervical carcinoma.Overexpression of MEKK3 indicates an unfavorable prognosis of patients with cervical carcinoma.