Abstract:Objective To study the relationship between the expressions of angiopoietins-2 (Ang-2) and prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after hepatic resection. Methods Sixty patients with primary liver cancer were retrospectively analyzed and the expressions of Ang-2 in carcinoma tissues were assayed by immunohistochemical staining. The interrelationships among the expressions of Ang-2, clinicopathological factors and the grade of differentiation of HCC cells were studied. The relationship between the expressions of Ang-2 and survival time was analysed. Results The expression rate of Ang-2 was 70%. Ang-2 staining had no correlation with clinicopathological factors (P＞0.05), but it had a significant correlation with the grade of differentiation of HCC cells (χ2=5.424，P=0.025). Ang-2 of moderately and poorly differentiated HCC were higher (66.7%) than those of well-differentiated HCC. The disease-free survival rates of patients with high Ang-2 expression and low Ang-2 expression were 50% (1-year), 33.3% (3-year), 16.7% (5-year) and 89.6% (1-year), 50.0% (3-year), 27.1% (5-year), respectively. The disease-free survival of patients with high Ang-2 expression were significantly less than those of patients with low Ang-2 expression (χ2=6.477, P =0.021). Conclusion The expressions of Ang-2 are correlated with the grade of differentiation of HCC cells, but are not correlate with clinicopathological factors. The survivals of patients with Ang-2 high expression are lower than those of low expression. Ang-2 is a significant predictive factor for recurrence after hepatic resection in HCC patients.

Key words:Angiopoietin-2,Carcinoma, hepatocellular,Immunohistochemistry