Abstract
Although many molecular and biological studies have shown risk factors for gastric cancer, the available knowledge is still insufficient to unveil the exact mechanism of gastric cancer. To investigate the relationships between Bves expression and the clinicopathologic features of gastric cancer and whether Bves can act as prognostic indicators in gastric cancer. Tissues were obtained from the gastrectomy specimens of 306 human gastric cancer and 78 noncancerous gastric tissue at the Department of Surgery and Pathology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University from February 1996 to March 2007. The method of immunohistochemistry was used to investigate the expression of Bves in them. The relationship between Bves expression and the survival times of the patients was retrospectively analysed. Reduced expression of Bves frequently occurred in gastric cancer tissue. Low expression of Bves correlated with histologic differentiation, depth of invasion, regional lymph nodes and distant metastasis, and TNM stages (P < 0.05). Bves expression did not correlate with age, gender, location of tumor, size of tumor and histologic type (P > 0.05); Further multivariate analysis revealed that lymph node metastasis (P < 0.0001), distant metastasis (P < 0.0001), surgical treatment (P < 0.0001), and the expression of Bves (P < 0.0001) were independent prognostic factors in patients with gastric cancer; The Kaplan-Meier plot showed that survival times of patients with low Bves expression was significantly lower than those in patients with high Bves expression. Besides, low Bves expression had a much more significant effect on the survival of those patients with early stage tumors (χ2 = 131.216,P < 0.0001), highlighted by a >51.3% reduction in 3-year survival compared with that of patients with high Bves expression. In late stages, the difference was also significant (χ2 = 5.818,P = 0.016), with a 34.8% reduction in 3-year survival. Reduced expression of Bves in gastric cancer is associated with tumor progression and the patient's poor survival. This study showed that the studied protein has further provided a basis for the development of potential biomarker for gastric cancer prognosis.