Expression and clinical significance of methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 in pancreas cancer and surrounding tissue / 中华胰腺病杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MeCP2) expression in specimens of pancreas cancer tumor and para-cancerous tissues and its prognostic value.Methods:The tissue microarray and immunohistochemistry were used to examine the MeCP2 expression in 59 cases of pancreatic cancer tumor tissues and 53 adjacent normal tissues. The correlation between the MeCP2 expression and clinicopathological characteristics of pancreas cancer patients was analyzed. Furthermore, the survival curve was drawn by Kaplan-Meier method and the Cox regression hazards model was used to study the prognostic value of MeCP2 expression in pancreas cancer.Results:The MeCP2 positive expression rate in 59 pancreas cancer tumor tissues was 47.5%, which was 67.9% in 53 adjacent tissues. The MeCP2 positive expression rate in adjacent tissues was obviously higher than that in pancreatic cancer tissues, and the difference was statistically significant ( P<0.05). The MeCP2 positive expression was significantly associated with pathological grade and lymph node metastasis(both P<0.05). The overall survival in patients positive for the MeCP2 expression was longer than that in those with negative MeCP2 expression( P<0.05). Cox multivariate analysis demonstrated that the level of MeCP2 expression was an independent predictor for prognosis in patients with pancreas cancer. Conclusions:MeCP2 is obviously positively expressed in para-cancerous tissues, but was lowly expressed in pancreatic cancer, indicating that MeCP2 detection can help to evaluate the prognosis of pancreatic cancer patients.