Expression of e-cadherin and β-catenin in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: relationships with prognosis

AIM:To elucidate the expression of E-cadherin and β-catenincorrelating with its clinical outcome in patients withesophageal squamous cell carcinoma(ESCC),by analyzingtheir interrelationship with clinicopathological variables andtheir effects on progress and prognosis.METHODS:Expression of E-cadherin and β-catenin wasdetermined by SP immunohistochemical technique inpatients with ESCC consecutively,their correlation withclinical characteristics was evaluated and analyzed bymultivariate analysis.RESULTS:The rate of expression of E-cadherin decreasedto 66.03 %(70/106)in ESCC and the protein level wasnegative correlated with histologic grade,tumor size,clinicalstaging,lymph node metastasis and venous invasion.Whereas the expression rate of β-catenin was reduced to69.8 %(74/106)and the level of protein expressioncorrelated only with histologic grade.There obviously existedinverse correlation between level of E-cadherin protein andsurvival,especially in stage Ⅰ,Ⅱa,Ⅱb(P=0.0033),Patientswith low-expressing tumors for β-catenin and non-expressingtumors for E-cadherin/β-catenin had lower survival periodthan those with normal-expressing ones(P=0.0501 andP=0.0080,respectively).Patients with diminished expressionof E-cadherin as grade Ⅱ or Ⅲ had shorter survival periodthan those with normally expressing and grade Ⅰ,nosignificance existed between grade Ⅰ and grade Ⅱ or Ⅲwith respect to different status of E-cadherin expression.Furthermore,Correlation analysis showed level of E-cadherincorrelated with that of β-catenin(P=0.005).Cox proportionalhazards model analysis suggested downregulation of E-cadherin was an important factor indicating poor prognosis.CONCLUSION:As a probable independent prognosticfactor,it correlates with overall and disease free survivalperiod,expression of E-cadherin but not β-catenin maypredict prognosis in patients with ESCC.