The expression and clinical significance of vascular endothelial growth factor-C and nm23-H1 in colorectal carcinoma

Objective To discuss the expression and clinical significance of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-C and nm23-H1 in colorectal carcinoma.Methods Immunohistochemical staining was employed to determine the expression of VEGF-C and nm23-H1 in the carcinoma tissues of 120 cases with colorectal carcinoma and in the adjacent mucosal tissues of 55 cases as control,and analyzed their correlation with cliniopathological features and prognosis.Results The positive expression of VEGF-C in the carcinoma tissues was 71.7％ (86/120),significantly higher than that in the adjacent mucosal tissues [21.8 ％ (12/55)],and there was significant difference (x2 =35.186,P ＜ 0.01).The positive expression of nm23-H1 in the carcinoma tissues was 57.5％ (69/120),significantly lower than that in the adjacent mucosal tissues [90.9％ (50/55)],and there was significant difference (x2 =18.351,P ＜ 0.01).The expression of VEGF-C was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis (P ＜ 0.05),and the expression of nm23-H 1was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis and pathological type (P ＜0.01 or ＜0.05).The expression of VEGF-C and nm23-H1 did not show a significant correlation with gender,age,tumor size,tumor site and depth of invasion (P ＞ 0.05).Spearman correlation analysis showed that the expression of VEGF-C was negatively correlated with the expression of nm23-H 1 in colorectal carcinoma (r =-0.472,P ＜0.01).Conclusions The joint detection of VEGF-C and nm23-H1 expression is very promising in prediction of the prognosis of patients with colorectal carcinoma.However,whether it can be used as a marker in prognosis judgment need further investigation. Key words: Colorectal neoplasms;  Neoplasm staging;  Prognosis;  Vascular endothelial growth factor C;  nm23-H1