Purpose: To investigate the prognostic relevance of cyclin D1 gene overexpression in laryngeal squamous cell carcinomas (LSCCs).
Patients and methods: The overexpression of cyclin D1 was analyzed in 149 LSCC patients with a median follow-up duration of 60 months using the DCS6 monoclonal antibody; only cases that overexpressed cyclin D1 in more than 5% of neoplastic cells were considered positive.
Results: Forty-eight cases (32.2%) were immunoreactive to the DCS6 antibody. Cyclin D1 overexpression was significantly associated with tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption, tumor extension, advanced clinical stage, and the presence of lymph node metastases. Univariate analysis showed that a shorter disease-free and overall survival were significantly associated with supraglottic site, tumor extension, advanced clinical stage, and cyclin D1 overexpression. At multivariate analysis, tumor extension and cyclin D1 overexpression were significantly associated with tumor recurrence, whereas tumor extension, supraglottic site and, at a borderline level of statistical significance, cyclin D1 overexpression, were associated with reduced overall survival.
Conclusion: The overexpression of cyclin D1 in LSCC is associated with unfavorable clinicopathologic features and represents an independent significant predictor of laryngeal carcinoma prognosis, particularly for disease-free survival. This indicates that cyclin D1 evaluation may be a further useful element for selecting subgroups of patients who should be treated with more aggressive therapies.