Expression Of RECK And MMP-9 In Pancreatic Cancer And Its Clinicopathological Significance

Objective:To investigate the expression of RECK and MMP-9 in pancreatic cancer and to explore the relationship between RECK or MMP-9 expression and the clinical pathological characteristic.Methods:The specimens were provided by the Department of Pathology, the Affiliated Hospital of Medical College, Qingdao University. It contained 28 cases of pancreatic cancer and 10 cases of normal pancreatic tissue. Each case had complete clinical pathological information. PV6000 immunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression of RECK and MMP-9 in pancreatic cancer and normal pancreatic tissue. All the statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 13.0 statistical software, including x 2 test,fisher exact test and spearman correlation analysis. The value p<0.05 was accepted as the level of significance.Results:The overall positive rate of RECK was 46.43% in pancreatic cancer, and 90% in normal pancreatic tissue. The comparison between these two groups indicated a significant difference (P<0.05). No statistically significant correlation was found with age, gender, tumor size, tumor locus and tumor differentiation (P>0.05).However, the positive rate of RECK inâ… +â…¡stage(tumor stage) was significantly higher than in III+IV stage(P<0.05). The positive rate of RECK in cases with distant metastases was significantly higher than in cases without distant metastasis(P<0.05). The overall positive rate of MMP-9 was 75% in pancreatic cancer, and 20% in normal pancreatic tissue. The comparison between these two groups indicated a significant difference (P<0.01). No statistically significant relationship was found with age, gender, tumor size, tumor locus, lymph node involvement and distant metastases (P>0.05). However, the positive rate of MMP-9 inâ… +â…¡stage(tumor stage) was significantly lower than inâ…¢+â…£stage(P<0.05). The positive rate of MMP-9 in high differentiation (tumor differentiation) was significantly lower than in low differentiation (P<0.01). The expression of RECK was negatively correlated with the expression of MMP-9 (r=-0.536, P<0.01).Conclusion:RECK is lowly expressed in pancreatic cancer, but MMP-9 is highly expressed. RECK and MMP-9 may serve as the important markers in the evaluation of tumor stage.