Objective: To evaluate the expression of HDGF and its implication in patients who undergone radical resection for stage I non-small cell lung cancer.
Methods: Immunohistochemical technique was applied to detect the expression of HDGF in 118 lung cancer tissues and 30 normal lung tissues as control. At the same time, the expression of VEGF and Ki-67 labeling rate of the tumors was evaluated.
Results: HDGF expression was observed in all cases, and significantly higher than that in normal lung tissues (52.23 +/- 10.35 vs. 156.73 +/- 70.95, P < 0.01). Expresson of HDGF was closely related to histological classification, and the expression in adenocarcinoma was much stronger than that in squamous cell cancers (P = 0.001), but not related to other clinicopathological factors. VEGF expression was closely related to the expression of HDGF. HDGF expression in the VEGF high expression group was much higher than that in VEGF low expression group (171.77 +/- 81.07 vs. 142.81 +/- 59.84, P = 0.028). Ki-67 expression was also closely related to the expression of HDGF, the labeling rate of Ki-67 in high HDGF expression group was much higher than that in low HDGF expression group (30.49% +/- 7.88% vs. 17.80% +/- 5.63%, P = 0.001). Univariate analysis showed that the patients with high HDGF expression had a shorter overall survival than that with low HDGF expression (40.0% vs. 77.5%, P = 0.008), and multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that HDGF was a significantly independent predictive factors for patients with stage I NSCLC (RR = 1.011, P = 0.002).
Conclusion: HDGF expression is upgraded in postoperative stage I non-small cell lung cancer patients. HDGF is a significantly independent predictive factor for patients with stage I NSCLC. HDGF may play an important role on carcinogenesis and development of stage I NSCLC through promoting cell proliferation and neoangiogenesis of the tumor.