Expression and clinical significance of aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 in nasopharyngeal squamous carcinoma / 肿瘤研究与临床

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the significance of aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1)expression in appraising the prognosis of nasopharyngeal squamous carcinoma (NPC).Methods The expression of ALDH1 protein was detected by immunohistochemistry in human specimens obtained from 120 NPC patients without the history of radiotherapy or chemothetapy.Results A relatively high expression of ALDH1 were observed in 40.0 ％ (48/120) patients of NPC,the expression of ALDH1 in the edge of the cancer nests and stroma,particularly spindle cancer cells were strongly positive.The positive expression of ALDH1 was closely associated with patients' nasopharyngeal tumor size (P =0.011),lymphatic metastasis (P =0.005) and clinic stage (P =0.001),but not associated with their gender and age (both P ＞ 0.05).The Kaplan-Merier and Cox regression analysis indicated that ALDH 1 closely correlated with clinical progrosis of the patients.It showed that ALDH1 was an independent risk factor which may affect the prognosis of NPC patients.Conclusion The expression of ALDH1 protein closely correlate with clinic outcome of NPC,suggesting that ALDH1 is a risk factor for clinic progrosis of NPC patients.