Background and objectives:
Predicting the prognosis in gastric carcinoma patients with intermediate stages is difficult. we investigated the prognostic impacts of cd44 and nm23 expression in a homogeneous group of patients with stage ii and iiia gastric carcinoma who had undergone curative resections.
Methods:
A total of 261 paraffin-embedded gastric carcinomas were stained with the monoclonal antibodies cd44 and nm23 using the labeled streptovidin biotin method.
Results:
The expression of cd44 and nm23 was detected, respectively, in 31.0% (81/261) and 70.1% (183/261) of all tumors. there was no correlation between cd44 expression and clinicopathological variables. however, nm23 was more frequently expressed in older patients with differentiated adenocarcinoma. a significant difference in 5-year survival rates was found between patients with cd44-positive (43.2%) and cd44-negative tumors (63.4%), (p = 0.0018). however, there was no significant difference in 5-year survival rates between patients with nm23-positive (54.7%) and nm23-negative tumors (62.7%) (p = 0.2734).
Conclusions:
Cd44 expression was a significant adverse prognostic factor in gastric carcinoma and may be a predictor of metastatic potential of the primary tumor. by contrast, immunohistochemical detection of nm23 expression was not a predictor of outcome of patients with gastric carcinoma.