Expression and clinical significance of p73 in children with Wilms tumor (WT) were investigated. A retrospective analysis was carried out on 50 children diagnosed with WT in the People's Hospital of Rizhao, from July 2013 to January 2015 (study group), and 20 healthy children with similar age and sex who received health examinations in the same hospital during the same period (control group). The relative expression of p73 mRNA in the peripheral blood of each group was detected by reverse transcription-quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) in order to study the association between p73 and the clinicopathological parameters of WT, as well as the impact of p73 on the patient prognosis. The two groups were not statistically different in respect to the clinical data of patients (P>0.05); the expression level of p73 in the blood samples of the study group was significantly higher than that of the control group (t=11.44, P<0.01); the expression of p73 in the study group was associated with factors, including tumor size, pathological type and lymphatic metastasis. Considering the mean value of the expression of p73 (3.32) as the boundary, the patients with expression value of p73 <3.32 were studied as the low-expression group, and patients with expression value of p73 >3.32 comprised the high-expression group. At the end of the follow-up, the median survival time and the survival rate of the patients in the high-expression group were significantly lower than those of the low-expression group (P<0.05). The high expression of p73 in the peripheral blood of children with WT was positively correlated with the clinical stage of the tumor, and was closely related with the low survival rate of patients.
Keywords: Wilms tumor in children; clinical stage; p73; survival rate.