Decreased expression levels of ELOVL6 indicate poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma.

The present study aimed to investigate the expression of elongation of very long-chain fatty acids family member 6 (ELOVL6) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues, and to determine its role in the development of HCC. A total of 377 HCC specimens were collected for tissue microarray and immunohistochemistry analyses. The ELOVL6 IHC score for HCC tissues was 0.97±0.71, which was significantly lower than that of the matched adjacent normal tissues (1.32±0.68; P<0.001). Patients with low levels of ELOVL6 expression were older (P=0.014) and possessed larger sized tumors (P=0.039) than patients with high expression levels. Additionally, Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that patients with low ELOVL6 expression levels also had significantly poorer overall (P<0.001) and disease-free (P=0.029) survival times, and a greater probability of recurrence. The tumor size, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, vascular invasion and ELOVL6 expression were all shown to be prognostic variables for overall survival in patients with HCC. Multivariate analysis revealed that vascular invasion (P<0.001), TNM stage (P<0.001) and ELOVL6 expression (P=0.001) were independent prognostic variables for overall survival. In addition, vascular invasion (P=0.032) and ELOVL6 expression (P=0.041) were independent risk factors for disease-free survival, and vascular invasion (P=0.019) and ELOVL6 expression (P=0.045) were independent risk factors associated with HCC recurrence. The present study revealed that in patients with HCC, ELOVL6 expression level was reduced in HCC tissues, and that higher ELOVL6 expression levels correlated with longer survival times. This indicates that ELOVL6 may serves as an independent marker of poor patient outcome.