Objective: To evaluate the expression and clinical significance of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) in patients with bladder urothelial cell carcinoma.
Methods: Immunohistochemical staining for MIF was performed on tissue sections of 110 patients with bladder urothelial cell carcinoma and 10 normal controls, and the correlations between MIF and clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis were also analyzed.
Results: Normal bladder urothelium from control subjects showed negative or weak staining of MIF. Of the cancer specimens, 72/110 (65.5%) showed a moderate to strong staining of MIF. The expression of MIF protein was found predominantly in the tumor cell cytoplasm and inversely correlated with tumor stage. 27 cases also showed a positive intranuclear staining of MIF, which was inversely correlated with tumor grade, stage and tumor size. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that the expression of MIF in the cell nuclei was associated with disease-free survival for the cancer patients, but multivariate analysis showed that MIF was not an independent prognostic factors.
Conclusions: The expression of MIF in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer tissues was more frequently than that in muscle-invasive disease, the positive staining of MIF in cell nuclei might be a favorable biomarker for patients with bladder urothelial cell carcinoma.