title: Clinical relevance of Elf-1 overexpression in endometrial carcinoma.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Oita Medical University, Oita 879-5593, Japan. takai@oita-med.ac.jp
authors.forename: Noriyuki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Takai
authors.forename: Tami
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Miyazaki
authors.forename: Masakazu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nishida
authors.forename: Sujie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.forename: Kaei
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nasu
authors.forename: Isao
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Miyakawa
mesh_terms: 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
chemical_list: D004268:DNA-Binding Proteins; D018809:Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen; D014157:Transcription Factors