AB51. The expression and clinical significance of TNFAIP8 in gastric adenocarcinoma

Purpose: Tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 8 (TNFAIP8), was implicated in the progression of several human malignancies. The role of TNFAIP8 in gastric adenocarcinoma was currently unknown, and our purpose was to evaluate the expression and its significance of TNFAIP8 in gastric adenocarcinoma.

Methods: The expression of TNFAIP8 was determined in 132 primary gastric adenocarcinoma specimens using immunohistochemistry (IHC), compared with 30 benign gastric specimens. The correlation between TNFAIP8 expression and clinicopathological parameters was assessed by Pearson Chi-square test, and the Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analysis was employed in the survival analysis.

Results: The immunohistochemistry results showed that TNFAIP8 expression was higher in gastric adenocarcinoma. Moreover, elevated expression of TNFAIP8 in gastric adenocarcinoma was significantly associated with the depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis and Lauren classification. Although TNFAIP8 expression did not correlate with overall survival of gastric adenocarcinoma (P=0.088), the positive expression of TNFAIP8 had significantly poorer overall survival and disease-free survival, compared with patients with negative expression of TNFAIP8 in intestinal type gastric adenocarcinoma (P=0.001 and P<0.001, respectively). In the multivariate Cox analysis, TNFAIP8 expression was an independent predictor for both overall survival and disease-free survival in intestinal type gastric adenocarcinoma (P=0.006 and P=0.007, respectively).

Conclusions: Overexpression of TNFAIP8 may contribute to the tumor progression of gastric adenocarcinma and indicate poor prognosis of intestinal type gastric adenocarcinoma, and it may be a useful therapy target for individual treatment.

Keywords: Gastric adenocarcinoma; tumor necrosis factor alpha-induced protein 8 (TNFAIP8); immunohistochemistry; prognosis