Clinical significance of proliferation index and E-cadherin expression in colorectal adenocarcinoma

Introduction/Objective. The aim of this study is to examine the association of E-cadherin expression and high proliferation index (proIDX) with clinical and pathological indicators of colorectal cancer progression. Methods. The biopsy of 72 patients, obtained by resection of colorectal cancer, was routinely processed at the Institute of Pathology of the Clinical Centre of Montenegro, embedded in paraffin and archived. Based on the archived pathohistological reports, two study groups were formed: the first group (n = 72) consisted of operative biopsies of colorectal cancer, and the control group (n = 72) consisted of biopsies of adjacent non-tumor tissue. Routine hematoxylin-eosin and immunohistochemical avidin-biotin-peroxidase complex method with anti-Ki67 and anti-E-cadherin antibodies was applied on. After quantification of the results for statistical tests, the software package SPSS for Windows (19.0) was used. Results. In colorectal carcinoma, we observed a significant association of proIDX with pT stage, lymph and blood vessel invasion, perineural invasion, lymph node metastases and distant metastases, and Astler–Coller stage tumor disease. We also observed that the absence of E-cadherin was significantly associated with pT stage, lymph and blood vessel invasion, perineural invasion with lymph node metastases, distant metastases, with C2 and D Astler–Coller tumor stage. E-cadherin expression is associated with proIDX with a significantly high, negative correlation coefficient. Conclusion. Our results indicate that it is possible to differentiate patients into groups with a higher or lower risk of developing metastatic disease, based on the expression of Ki67 and E-cadherin.