Vascular endothelial growth factor in children with neuroblastoma: a retrospective analysis

BACKGROUND: Despite aggressive therapy, advanced stage neuroblastoma patients have poor survival rates. Although angiogenesis correlates with advanced tumour stage and plays an important role in determining the tumour response to treatment in general, clinical data are still insufficient, and more clinical evaluations are needed to draw conclusions. The aim of this study was to evaluate vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression in patients with neuroblastoma, determine whether it correlates with other prognostic factors and/or therapeutic response, and to assess should VEGF be considered in a routine diagnostic workup. MATERIALS AND METHODS: VEGF expression was determined by immunohistochemistry using anti-VEGF antibody in paraffin embedded primary tumour tissue from 56 neuroblastoma patients. Semiquantitative expression of VEGF was estimated and compared with gender, age, histology, disease stage, therapy, and survival. Statistical analyses, including multivariate analysis, were performed. RESULTS: VEGF expression correlated with disease stage and survival in neuroblastoma patients. Combination of VEGF expression and disease stage as a single prognostic value for survival (P-value = 0.0034; odds ratio (OR) (95%CI) = 26.17 (2.97-230.27) exhibited greater correlation with survival than individually. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation significantly improved survival of the advanced stage patients with high VEGF expression. CONCLUSION: VEGF expression should be considered in a routine diagnostic workup of children with neuroblastoma, especially in those more than 18 months old and with advanced disease stage. High VEGF expression at the time of disease diagnosis is a bad risk prognostic factor, and can be used to characterize subsets of patients with an unfavourable outcome.