Abstract
Introduction: PAI-1 has been shown to be a clinical marker of a poor prognosis in several human cancers, and it has also been shown to promote tumor growth and invasion during angiogenesis. Methods: To assess PAI-1 as a marker for the malignancy of digestive tract cancer, we performed quantitative RT-PCR for the PAI-1 gene and evaluated the relationship between the PAI-1 gene expression levels and clinicopathological findings in digestive tract cancer. Results: A significant increase in PAI-1 expression scores was observed in lymphnode-metastasis-positive digestive tract cancers compared to negative cancers as well as in distantmetastasis-positive digestive tract cancers compared to negative cancers. The PAI-1 expression score increased markedly with tumor stage, and multivariate analysis revealed the PAI-1 expression score to be a strong and independent prognostic factor for digestive tract cancer. Conclusion: These results suggested that PAI-1 may serve as a new parameter for the predicting the outcome of digestive tract cancer.
