Reduced expression of lamin A/C correlates with poor histological differentiation and prognosis in primary gastric carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Lamin A/C is very important in DNA replication, RNA dependent transcription and nuclear stabilization. Reduced or absent lamin A/C expression has been found to be a common feature of a variety of different cancers. To investigate the role of lamin A/C in gastric carcinoma (GC) pathogenesis, we analyzed the correlations between the lamin A/C expression level and clinicopathological factors and studied its prognostic role in primary GC. METHODS: The expression of lamin A/C at mRNA level was detected by the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and real time RT-PCR, and western blot was used to examine the protein expression. Lamin A/C expression and its prognostic significance were investigated by performing immunohistochemical analysis on a total of 126 GC clinical tissue samples. RESULTS: Both lamin A/C mRNA and protein expression were downregulated in the majority of tumours compared with corresponding normal gastric tissues (p = 0.011 and p = 0.036, respectively). Real time RT-PCR further validated that downregulation of lamin A/C is associated with poor histological differentiation (r = 0.438, p = 0.025). The immunohistochemical staining showed an evident decrease of lamin A/C expression in 55.6% (70/126) GC cases. Importantly, the negative lamin A/C expression correlated strongly with histological classification (r = 0.361, p = 0.034). Survival analysis revealed that patients with lamin A/C downregulation have a poorer prognosis (p = 0.034). In addition, lamin A/C expression was found to be an independent prognostic factor by multivariate analysis. CONCLUSION: Data of this study suggest that lamin A/C is involved in the pathogenesis of GC, and it may serve as a valuable biomarker for assessing the prognosis for primary GC.