Lesion human leukocyte antigen-F expression is associated with a poor prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-F, a non-classical HLA-class I molecule, has attracted attention as an important immunosuppressive molecule in recent years, although the clinical relevance of HLA-F expression in cancer patients remains unclear. In the present study, HLA-F expression in 90 primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) lesions and 55 corresponding adjacent normal liver tissues was analyzed by immunohistochemistry, and the associations between HLA-F expression and clinicopathological parameters and patient survival times were analyzed. Positive HLA-F expression was observed in 47.8% (43/90) of the HCC lesions and in 10.9% (6/55) of the normal liver tissues. HLA-F expression in HCC lesions was significantly correlated with patient gender (P=0.02), and venous or lymphatic invasion (P=0.02). Patients who were HLA-F-positive had worse survival times than those who were HLA-F-negative (P=0.04). The mean overall survival times for HLA-F-negative and -positive patients were 44.2 months [95% confidence interval (CI), 37.7–50.7] and 33.0 months (95% CI, 25.1–40.8), respectively. Multivariate analysis revealed that HLA-F was an independent prognostic factor for HCC patients with a hazard ratio of 2.1 (95% CI, 1.0–4.4). In conclusion, the present study demonstrated that HLA-F expression was associated with poor survival in HCC patients, and is correlated with tumor cell invasion and metastasis.