Apolipoprotein E and complement C4b1 expressions and its significance in human pancreatic carcinoma

Objective To investigate the expression of apolipoprotein E (ApoE) and complement C4b1 in pancreatic carcinoma and study its significance. Methods Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of ApoE and C4b1 protein in 38 cases of pancreatic carcinoma tissues and adjacent normal pancreatic tissues, and RT-PCR was used to detect the expression of ApoE and C4b1 mRNA in 20 cases of pancreatic carcinoma tissues and adjancent normal pancreatic tissues. The relevance of ApoE and C4b1 expressions to the biological features of pancreatic carcinoma were analyzed. Results The positive rates of ApoE and C4b1 expressions are 86.8% (33/38) and 76.3% (29/38) in pancreatic carcinoma, respectively,which were significantly higher than those in normal pancreatic tissues [42.1% (16/38) and 26.3% ( 10/38 ),P ＜ 0.01]. The positive rates of ApoE and C4b1 expressions [78.3% ( 18/23 ) and 73.9% ( 17/23 )] in patients with metastasis were significantly higher than in those without metastasis [(33.3% (5/15) and 40.0%(6/15), P ＜ 0.05). Significantly higher expressions of ApoE and C4b1 mRNA were noted in pancreatic carcinoma(4.83 ± 0.65 and 7.94 ± 0. 95 ) than those in the normal pancreatic tissue ( 1.78 ± 0.74and 1.22 ±0.57, P ＜ 0.01 ), and patients with metastasis showed significantly higher expression of ApoE and C4b1 mRNA (5.05 ±0.71 and 8.24 ± 1.07) than those without metastasis (4.42 ±0.25 and 7.39 ±0.15,P ＜ 0.05). Conclusions ApoE and C4b1 were highly expressed in pancreatic cancer, and may be closely related with lymph node metastasis. Key words: Pancreatic neoplasms;  Apolipoproteins E;  Complement C4b;  Metastasis