Abstract
Alteration of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antigen expression has been supposed to play critical roles in progression of malignancies. However, clinical significance of the non-classical HLA class I antigen HLA-F remains largely unknown. In this study, HLA-F expression in 277 primary gastric cancer (GC) lesions was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Data revealed that HLA-F expression was observed in 71.1% (197/277) of the GC lesions. Lesion HLA-F expression was unrelated to the clinicoparameters such as gender, age, depth of tumor invasion and disease stage. Survival analysis revealed that HLA-F expression in GC lesion was unrelated to patient prognosis (p=0.190). The mean overall survival time (MOS) for lesion HLA-F negative and positive patients was 11.3 months (95% CI: 9.3-13.3) and 13.9 months (95% CI: 10.5-17.3), respectively. In conclusion, our study provided the evidence that HLA-F expression was unrelated to prognosis for patients with gastric cancer.