Correlation between RAR-β expression in lung squamous cell carcinoma tissues and prognosis.

OBJECTIVE To explore the retinoic acid receptor-β (RAR-β) expression in lung squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) tissues and its prognosis. PATIENTS AND METHODS SP assay was used to detect the RAR-β expression in 100 cases of surgically resected LSCC tissues and 20 cases of peritumoral normal lung tissues, and prognosis follow-up was conducted. RESULTS The overall positive expression rate of RAR-β was 54.00%, which was not correlated with age, gender, phase and pathological type (p>0.05). Stratified analysis showed that the prognosis of patients with positive IRAR-β expression in phase I was significantly better than that of those with negative IRAR-β expression, in which the median survival times were 31 and 22 months respectively (p=0.022). In contrast, the prognosis of patients with negative RAR-β expression was better than that of those with positive RAR-β expression in phase II and III A. The median survival times were 23 and 16 months respectively in phase II p = 0.008, and 19 and 7 months respectively in phase III A (p=0.019). CONCLUSIONS RAR-β is expressed in LSCC tumor tissues. RAR-β expression, which is not significantly correlated with the clinicopathological characteristics of patients, affects the postoperative survival of LSCC patients in phase I and II-III A dually. RAR-β expression state is one of the independent factors for the prognosis of LSCC patients.