Title: Expression and clinical significance of EGF and EGFR in human hepatocellular carcinoma
Abstract: Objective To investigate the expression and clinicopathological significance of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in human HCC tissues. Methods Immunohistochemistry was employed to determine the expression of EGF and EGFR in 55 HCC tissues and their adjacent liver tissues. Results The positive rate of EGF was significantly lower in the HCC tissue (54.55 %,30/55) than in the adjacent liver tissue (76.36 %, 42/55) (P 0.05). The positive rate of EGFR in the HCC tissue (58.18 %, 32/55) was markedly higher than that in the adjacent liver tissue (36.36 %,20/55)(P 0.05). The expression of EGFR in the HCC tissue was significantly correlated with the clinical stage, the Portal vein tumor thrombus, the presence of extrahepatic metastasis, and the recurrence of tumor, but not correlated with the diameter of tumor, the number of tumor, the level of serum alpha- fetoprotein (AFP) and the differentiation of tumor. The expression rate of EGF was not correlated with the clinicopathological parameters. Conclusions EGF may not be involved in the initiation and progression of HCC, whereas, EGFR relates to the initiation and progression of HCC. EGFR can be considered as a marker for predicting the metastasis and recurrence of HCC.
Publication Year: 2005
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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