Clinical relevance of Elf-1 overexpression in endometrial carcinoma.
OBJECTIVE
Elf-1 is a member of the Ets transcription factor family that regulates the genes involved in cellular growth and differentiation. Enhanced expression of Elf-1 has been reported in prostate cancer, breast cancer, and osteosarcoma.


METHODS
To elucidate the involvement of Elf-1 in endometrial carcinogenesis, we analyzed serial frozen tissue sections from 31 patients with endometrial carcinoma and 20 patients with normal endometria for Elf-1 protein expression, using fluorescent immunohistochemistry. We analyzed the relationship between the percentages of Elf-1-stained cells and patient characteristics, including clinical stage, histological grade, presence of invasion to greater than one-half the myometrium, clinical outcome, and survival rate.


RESULTS
Elf-1 was weakly detected in some normal endometria in the proliferative phase (0-18.9%) and other normal endometria in the secretory phase (0-28.5%). There was, however, abundant Elf-1 immunoreactivity in the nucleus of the endometrial carcinoma cells along with a little cytoplasmic staining. Scoring on the basis of the percentage of nuclear-positive cells indicated that nuclear Elf-1 expression was significantly associated with PCNA-labeling index, clinical stage, histological grade, the presence of invasion to greater than one-half the myometrium, and clinical outcome (P < 0.01, respectively). Survival data were available for all patients and demonstrated that Elf-1 expression was significantly associated with poor prognosis (P < 0.01).


CONCLUSIONS
Our results demonstrate that Elf-1 expression in endometrial carcinoma correlates with the malignant potential of this tumor.
Takai
Noriyuki
N
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Oita Medical University, Oita 879-5593, Japan. takai@oita-med.ac.jp
Miyazaki
Tami
T
Nishida
Masakazu
M
Shang
Sujie
S
Nasu
Kaei
K
Miyakawa
Isao
I
D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000378:metabolism; D016889:Endometrial Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009361:Neoplasm Invasiveness; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D018809:Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen / Q000378:metabolism; D014157:Transcription Factors / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000378:metabolism
D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D018809:Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen; D014157:Transcription Factors