Clinical sample analysis further confirmed that the expression of POSTN and N-cadherin were correlated with pathological grade and lymph node metastasis of HNC.
In addition, subgroup analysis showed that POSTN was related to microvascular invasion (OR = 5.09, 95% CI = 3.07-8.44, p < .00001), tumor differentiation (OR = 2.03, 95% CI = 1.41-2.91, p = .0001), and lymph node metastasis (OR = 3.05, 95% CI = 2.01-4.64, p < .00001).
This observation demonstrated that periostin was overexpressed in gastric cancer and lymph node metastasis, which suggests that periostin plays an important role in the progression and metastasis of gastric cancer.
RESULTS The high expression of periostin was significantly correlated to tumor stage (P=0.000), vascular invasion (P=0.027), differentiation (P=0.002), invasion depth (P=0.023), and lymph node metastasis (P=0.017).
High POSTN expression was significantly associated with lymph node metastasis (<i>p</i>=0.004) and advanced American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage (<i>p</i>=0.006).
The positive ratio of periostin expression in the neoplastic stroma was significantly correlated with the depth of invasion (p=0.007) and lymph node metastasis (p=0.027).