Expression of clusterin in pancreatic adenocarcinoma and clinical significance

Objective To trace the expression pattern of clusterin in pancreatic adenocarcinoma and investigate the relationship between clusterin and clinicopathologic features.Methods Clusterin was detected by immunohistouchemical staining in 52 cases of pancreatic adenocacinoma.The positive rate and survival time were analyzed.Results Clusterin was expressed in tumor cells (32.7％) and clusterin expression showed significant correlations with lymph node metastasis (P ＜ 0.05) and preoperative serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) level (P ＜ 0.05).However,no significant relationship was found between clusterin expression and cancer differentiation,carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) or lymphovascular invasion (P ＞ 0.05).Prognostically,clusterin expression had no significant correlation with survival (P ＞ 0.05),while survival had a strong correlation with lymph node metastasis (P ＞ 0.05).Conclusion Clusterin can be a potential molecular biologic prognostic marker for pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Key words: Clusterin ;  Pancreatic carcinoma;  Prognosis