RESUMO
BACKGROUND & AIMS: Long-term survival of patients with Zollinger-Ellison syndrome (ZES) is largely determined by the presence or absence of liver metastases. However, because of the lack of precision of these criteria, development of further indicators is still required. Recent evidence showing that autoantibodies directed against the p53 protein could predict poor survival for some types of cancers prompted us to investigate the presence of such antibodies in sera from patients with ZES and their potential value as survival indicator. METHODS: Anti-p53 antibodies were detected in the sera of 44 consecutive patients with ZES using both an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blotting. The mean follow-up of these patients was 92 months. RESULTS: Anti-p53 antibodies were detected in 7 of the patients with ZES (16%) by both ELISA and Western blotting. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that the presence of anti-p53 antibodies (P = 0.0009 and P = 0.017, respectively) and liver metastases (P = 0.0009 and P = 0.012, respectively) was independently associated with shorter survival. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that anti-p53 antibodies are an indicator of survival and could be used in combination with staging to determine which patients with ZES have poor prognoses and therefore require reinforced therapy.
