Expression of EGFR in epithelial ovarian cancer and their correlation with prognosis of patients

Objective:To investigate the expression of Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor(EGFR) in epithelial ovarian cancer and their correlation with clinical pathological features and prognosis of the patients.Methods: Expression of EGFR mRNA in ovarian cancers,benign ovarian tumor and normal ovarian tissues were detected by RT-PCR assay and immunohistochemical staining methods.Results: The positive rate of EGFR expression in tumor tissues was 64.44%,with an average expression level of(0.81±0.23),both data were significant higher than that in benign tumors and normal tissues(P0.05).The EGFR expression level were significant higher in cancerous tissues with lymphatic metastasis than that without lymphatic metastasis,in stage Ⅲ～Ⅳ canner than that in stage Ⅰ～Ⅱ cancer,in(P0.05~0.01).Long-rank analyze indicated the accumulated survival rate of the initially differentiate cancer tissues than that in mediate and highly differentiate tissues(P0.05~0.01).For patients with cancer,long-rank analysis showed that patients showed positive EGFR expression had lower cumulative survival rate than those showed negative results.Conclusions: The high expression level of EGFR in epithelial ovarian cancer is closely correlated with stage of epithelial ovarian cancer stage,lymphatic metastasis status and patients′ survival rate,thus it can be used as a significant indicator of the biological behavior and patients′ prognosis.