ABSTRACT
Objective To study COX-2 expression in bladder transitional cell carcinoma in order to explore the relationship between the immunohistochemical staining and biological behavior of bladder cancer. Methods The expression of COX-2,Ki-67,and VEGF was examined in 50 cases of bladder transitional cell carcinoma and 10 normal bladder mucosa by means of immunohistochemical technique.Results The expression of COX-2 in BTCCs was higher than that in normal bladder mucosa.The positive rate of COX-2 was 80% in BTCCs while it was not detected in normal bladder mucosa.COX-2 was highly positively related to the grade,stage and prognosis of tumors.The expression of COX-2 in poorly differentiated,invasive or re- curring BTCCs was higher than that in well differentiated superficial or nonrecurring ones.But there was not significant difference between the solitary tumour and multiple ones.There were positive correlation both be- tween COX-2 and Ki-67 and between COX-2 and VEGF.Conclusion The high expression of COX-2 may benefit increase in bladder cancer cell proliferative activity.VEGF expression in COX-2 positive tumor was significantly higher than that in COX-2 negative tumor.