Clinical implications of arrest-defective protein 1 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma: a novel predictor of microvascular invasion.

OBJECTIVE: The associations between arrest-defective protein 1 (ARD1) gene expression and the clinicopathological characteristics and clinical outcomes of 94 patients undergoing hepatectomy for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were investigated.

METHODS: ARD1 mRNA levels in HCC and corresponding non-cancerous tissues were quantified by real-time PCR. The gene expression of the tumor relative to that in the non-tumor tissues was calculated using the 2(-)(ΔΔ)(CT) method. The subjects were classified into high expression (2(-)(ΔΔ)(CT) > 1, n = 38) and low expression (2(-)(ΔΔ)(CT) ≤ 1, n = 56) groups.

RESULTS: The HCCs did not differ from matched liver tissues in terms of ARD1 mRNA levels. The high expression group had more often microvascular invasion than the low expression group (32 vs. 14%; p = 0.045). The two groups did not differ significantly in terms of other patient or tumor variables. The median follow-up period was 92.1 months. The 5-year recurrence-free and overall survival rates were 34 and 76% for the high expression group, respectively, which were similar to the rates of the low expression group (46 vs. 73%, p = 0.98 and p = 0.52, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS: Intratumoral ARD1 mRNA overexpression was involved in the microvascular invasion process in patients with HCC, although it did not associate strongly with postresectional outcomes.