Expression of ornithine decarboxylase in precancerous and cancerous gastric lesions

AIM: To investigate the expression of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) in precancerous and cancerous gastric lesions. METHODS: We studied the expression of ODC in gastric mucosa from patients with chronic superficial gastritis (CSG, n = 32), chronic atrophic gastritis [CAG, n = 43; 15 with and 28 without intestinal metaplasia (IM)], gastric dysplasia (DYS, n = 11) and gastric cancer (GC, n = 48) tissues using immunohistochemical staining. All 134 biopsy specimens of gastric mucosa were collected by gastroscopy. METHODS: The positive rate of ODC expression was 34.4%, 42.9%, 73.3%, 81.8% and 91.7% in cases with CSG, CAG without IM, CAG with IM, DYS and GC, respectively (P < 0.01), The positive rate of ODC expression increased in the order of CSG < CAG (without IM) < CAG (with IM) < DYS and finally, GC. In addition, ODC positive immunostaining rate was lower in well-differentiated GC than in poorly-differentiated GC (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The expression of ODC is positively correlated with the degree of malignity of gastric mucosa and development of gastric lesions. This finding indicates that ODC may be used as a good biomarker in the screening and diagnosis of precancerous lesions. (c) 2007 The WJG Press. All rights reserved.