[Expression of tumor suppressor gene PTEN in laryngeal carcinoma and its clinical significance].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression of tumor suppressor gene PTEN in laryngeal carcinoma and study its clinical-pathological implication and its clinical significance. METHOD: The expression of PTEN was detected by immunohistochemistry SP(Streptavidin peroxidase) method in 68 cases of laryngeal carcinoma, 33 cases of adjacent normal laryngeal mucosa. RESULT: (1) There was 61.8% (42 of 68) of cases with expression of PTEN in the tumor tissues, and 100.0% of cases (33 of 33) with the expression of PTEN in the normal mucosa. The positive expression of PTEN in the laryngeal carcinoma gorp was remarkably lower than that in the control group. ( P <0.01). (2) The positive expression of PTEN in high and middle degree of differentiation group was significantly higher than that in low degree of differentiation(79.3% vs 48.7%). Tumors with lymph node metastases(55.0%) had less PTEN protein expression than those without metastasis(71.4%) (P <0.05). As for the PTEN expression between I + II stage and III + IV stage, the difference was significant (76.0% vs 53.5%)(P <0.05). The positive rates of PTEN decreased with clinical stage, the poor differentiation, deep invasion and lymph nodes metastasis ( P <0.05). PTEN protein expression had no relation to the patients' age, sex, tumor size and location (P >0.05). CONCLUSION: PTEN gene plays an important role in the occurrence and development of laryngeal carcinoma. It is suggested that PTEN can be a useful marker for predicting invasion and metastasis ability of laryngeal carcinoma.