Versican expression in human cervical cancer.

Versican expression may enhance tumour invasion and metastasis. However, the expressions of versican in cervical cancer have seldom been characterised. The aim of this study was to investigate versican expression in human cervical cancers. We immunohistochemically investigated the expression of versican protein in 174 cervical cancers and analysed the correlation with various clinicopathological features, including patient outcome. Stromal versican expression was significantly higher in patients with lymph node metastasis (p<0.0001). Epithelial versican expression was significantly higher in patients with non-squamous cell cercinoma (p=0.0003), lymph-vascular space invasion (p=0.046), lymph node metastasis (p=0.009) and ovarian metastasis (p=0.0001). Multivariate analysis showed that high epithelial versican expression was an independent prognostic factor for disease-free survival. Versican enrichment of the tumour tissue may be associated with progression in cervical cancer. Versican expression can serve as an indicator of poor prognosis in patients with cervical cancer.