Background/aims: Tumor angiogenesis is associated with disease stage in gastric carcinoma. The tumor suppressor p53 was recently reported to regulate angiogenesis. We investigated the relationship between nuclear p53 accumulation and tumor vascularity in gastric carcinoma.
Methodology: Patients with gastric carcinoma undergoing surgery were randomly enrolled. Nuclear p53 expression assessed by immunohistochemistry on tumor sections was categorized as higher and lower groups. Tumor vascularity was assessed by counting microvessel density on anti-CD34 stained sections. Tumor vascularity between different p53 expressions was compared based on the different clinicopathologic characteristics.
Results: Twenty-three patients had gastric carcinoma with higher nuclear p53 expression and 42 with lower nuclear p53 expression. Vascularity in higher p53 group (54.3 +/- 35.3) was significantly higher than that in lower p53 group (32.1 +/- 29.9) (p = 0.009). Further analysis showed that higher nuclear p53 immunoreactivity was associated with significantly higher vascularity in the advanced gastric carcinoma group (p = 0.023), the intestinal type group (p = 0.003), the non-cardiac group (p = 0.019), and the H. pylori-negative group (p = 0.014).
Conclusions: The present study demonstrated that nuclear p53 protein expression positively associates vascularity in gastric carcinoma although their relationship varies in the different clinicopathologic subsets.