Clinical significance of serum VEGF-C level in patients with breast cancer

Objective To explore clinical significance of serum vascular endothelial growth factor-C(VEGF-C) level of patients with breast cancer. Methods The sandwich enzyme-linked immunoadsorbent assay(ELISA) were used to measure serum VEGF-C level in peripheral blood in 54 cases of patient with breast cancer, and in 30 cases of patient with breast benign disease and in 30 cases of healthy people and compared them. Statistical analysis was performed by using the SPSS 10.0 software package. Results Serum VEGF-C level of patients with breast cancer(6056.72±123.95pg/ml) was significantly higher than that in patient with breast benign disease (5031.34±209.10pg/ml) and healthy people (5029.58±210.86pg/ml)(P0.01);The serum VEGF-C level was significantly higher in advanced stage(stageⅢ-Ⅳ)(5863.70±175.92pg/ml) than that in early breast cancer patients(stageⅠ-Ⅱ)(5267.72±170.3pg/ml)(P0.01); The serum VEGF-C level in breast cancer patients with lymph node metastasis (6369.27±162.49pg/ml) was higher than that in breast cancer patients without(5784.90±147.14pg/ml)(P0.05); The serum VEGF-C level in patient with breast cancer was affected by surgery(P0.05); But there was not significantly different comparing among histologic subtype of breast cancer(P0.05). Conclusion The level of serum VEGF-C may be used as a new tumor marker of breast cancer, so as to monitor the progress of the disease and prognosis index.