Correlation analysis of Ki67 and CK7 expression with clinical characteristics and prognosis of postoperative cervical adenocarcinoma patients.

BACKGROUND

The purpose of this study is to investigate the correlation between cytokeratin 7 (CK7) and marker of proliferation Ki67 protein expression and clinical characteristics and prognosis of patients with cervical adenocarcinoma after surgery.

METHODS

A total of 126 patients with cervical adenocarcinoma treated by surgery in our hospital from June 2011 to September 2015 were enrolled in this study. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to detect the expression of CK7 and Ki67 in 126 cases of cervical adenocarcinoma tissues. The chi-square (χ2) test was used to compare the relationship between the positive expression rate of CK7 or Ki67 and clinicopathological features. Kaplan-Meier method was used to analyze the survival of different protein expression groups and Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to analyze the risk factors affecting the prognosis.

RESULTS

The positive rate of CK7 was correlated with muscle invasion, vascular invasion, differentiation, and lymph node metastasis (all P<0.05). The positive expression rate of Ki67 was related to the degree of myometrial invasion and International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage (both P<0.05). Both CK7 and Ki67 may be independent risk factors for the prognosis of patients with cervical adenocarcinoma after surgery (both P<0.05), and their high expression heralds worse prognosis.

CONCLUSIONS

The CK7 and Ki67 proteins may be key regulatory factors in the development of cervical adenocarcinoma after surgery, and their overexpression may lead to worse prognosis. Both CK7 and Ki67 may provide new markers for prognosis evaluation of cervical adenocarcinoma.