Expression and clinical significance of p16 and nm23 in breast cancer

Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of p16 and nm23 gene in human breast cancer. Method The expression of the two protein was investigated by mean of immunohistochemistry in 58 cases of breast cancer.Results The expressions of nm23 and p16 were significantly different between breast cancer and breast benign disease( P 0.05).The positive rates of p16 expression in axillary lymph nodes metastasis group and distant metastasis group were lower than those in patients without axillary lymph nodes metastasis or without distant metastasis( P 0.05 ).Expression of p16 protein was not correlated with clinical grade?tumor size and life of patients( P 0.05),but tumor pathological type. Expression of nm23 protein product was inversely associated with the axillary lymph nodes involvement and distant metastasis( P 0.05 ),and was not correlated with tumor pathological type,tumor size and life of patients( P 0.05)but clinical grade. Overall survival was higher in nm23 higher expression cases and p16 positive cases than in the lower positive cases. There was no significant difference between p16 protein expression and nm23 protein expression, but there were higher p16 and nm23 positive reaction in breast cancer with long survival time. Conclusion p16 and nm23 might play an important role in the carcinogenesis,dependent markets to calculate the biological behavior and the prognosis. It is helpful to learn the prognosis by detecting p16 and nm23 together.