Background: Although the clinicopathological significance of serum p53 antibodies (s-p53-Abs) in esophageal cancer have been evaluated previously, previous reports only analyzed around 100-200 patients. This study was a multi-institutional study promoted by the Japan Esophageal Society to evaluate the clinical significance of preoperative s-p53-Ab status and antibody titers in 1487 esophageal cancer patients without neoadjuvant therapy.
Methods: A total of 1487 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma surgically treated between 2008 and 2016 in 15 hospitals in Japan were enrolled. The cut-off value to classify the patients into s-p53-Ab positive and negative groups was 1.30 U/ml. A receiver operating characteristic curve was constructed to assess the s-p53-Abs cut-off levels to differentiate poor prognosis among the s-p53-Ab positive group. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to evaluate the clinicopathological and prognostic significance of s-p53-Ab status and titers.
Results: Although s-p53-Ab status was significantly associated with tumor depth (P = 0.002), nodal status (P = 0.027), and pathological stage (P = 0.002). The s-p53-Ab positive status was not significantly associated with poor overall survival (P = 0.699). Using 9.82 U/ml as a cut-off, the high s-p53-Ab titer group showed a significantly worse overall survival than the low s-p53-Ab titer group (P = 0.038). However, the difference was not significant in the multivariate analysis.
Conclusion: The presence of s-p53-Abs was associated with tumor progression. Although high s-p53-Ab titers more than 9.82 U/ml, might be associated with poor prognosis for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, it was not an independent risk factor.
Keywords: Antibody titers; Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma; Prognosis; Serum p53 antibodies.