High podoplanin expression was significantly associated with ~3- and 5-fold increases in the presence of positive lymph node metastasis and poor histological grade, respectively (P<0.05).
High levels of ITGB4 expression were significantly correlated with the hallmarks of EMT (solitary cell infiltration, reduced E-cadherin expression, and increased vimentin expression), with high tumor grade, and with the presence of lymph node metastasis, and showed an independent prognostic effect.
Compared to NPC patients with low-grade (stage I-II) tumor node metastasis (TNM) and those without lymph node metastasis, the expression of CXCR4, CXCR7, and CXCL12 were significantly higher in NPC patients with high-grade (stage III-IV) TNM and those with lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05).
Consistently, prostate epithelium-specific inactivation of Aes in Pten<sup>flox/flox</sup> mice increased expression of Snail and MMP9, and accelerated growth, invasion and lymph node metastasis of the mouse prostate tumor.
But high Bmi1 expression was significantly correlated with the clinical stage (pooled OR=3.04, 95%CI=1.31-7.07, P=0.010, random effect), tumor size (pooled OR=2.01, 95%CI=1.14-3.55, P=0.016, random effect), T classification (pooled OR=2.79, 95%CI=1.94-4.03, P<0.001, fixed effect), lymph node metastasis (pooled OR=2.24, 95%CI=1.47-3.39, P<0.001, random effect) and distant metastasis (pooled OR=5.05, 95%CI=1.29-19.70, P=0.020, random effect), and led to a poor overall survival (OS) in GC patients (RR=3.38, 95%CI=2.43-4.69, P<0.001, fixed effect).
In 24 lymph node-positive patients we selected the corresponding lymph node metastases for analysis of PRL-3 expression, and a validation set (n = 99) of invasive breast cancer samples was examined.
In conclusion, the present meta-analysis demonstrated that high expression of UCA1 might serve as a common molecular marker for predicting lymph node metastasis and prognosis in various cancers.
The study showed that IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α levels correlated with clinical disease stage and lymph node metastasis as well as with ER and HER2 antigen expression.
The expression level of OPN mRNA was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis, lymphatic or venous invasion, and TNM stage (P = 0.0033, 0.0061, 0.0008, and 0.0012, respectively).
Comparing expression levels of each HOX gene among the different types of cancer tissues, the expression level of HOXB7 was lower in lymph node metastasis-positive cancer tissues than negative cancer tissues; those of HOXD12 and D13 were higher in progesterone receptor-positive cancer tissues than negative cancer tissues; and the expression level of HOXC5 was lower in cancerous tissues with mutated-type p53 than in normal and cancerous tissues with wild-type p53.
Growth characteristics of the cancers (superficially spreading, penetrating or invasive, lymph node metastasis) were compared with immunohistochemical expression of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) protein (apoptosis indicator), bcl-2 and p53 (apoptosis-associated), Ki-67 (cell proliferation), and E-cadherin (cell adhesion) proteins.
No significant correlation was seen with history of abnormal sexual habits, but p16 expression was significantly correlated in cases with multiple sexual partners (P = 0.003), with increasing histological grade (P = 0.045) and in cases with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.03).