Human Endogenous Retroviruses-K (HML-2)‎ Expression Is Correlated with Prognosis and Progress of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract EN

Background.

The association between human endogenous retroviruses-K (HERV-K) (HML-2) and human disease, including a variety of cancers, has been indicated.

However, the function of HERV-K (HML-2) in the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) still remains largely unclear.

Methods.

We detected the expression of HERV-K (HML-2) in 84 HCC tissues and adjacent nontumor tissues by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and analyzed its correlation with the clinical parameters.

Result.

The HEVR-K level was significantly increased in HCC compared with adjacent normal tissues (P<0.01) which was proved to be significantly associated with cirrhosis (P<0.05), tumor differentiation (P<0.05), and TNM stage (P<0.05).

Moreover, the high expression of HERV-K (HML-2) had a poorer overall survival than patients with lower expression by a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis (P<0.01).

The multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that the level of HERV-K (HML-2) was an independent prognostic factor for the overall survival rate of HCC patients.

Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves demonstrated the diagnostic accuracy of HERV-K (HML-2) expression in HCC (AUC = 0.729, 74.7% sensitivity, and 67.8% specificity).

Conclusions.

Our results suggested that upregulation of HERV-K (HML-2) in HCC patients was significantly related to cancer progression and poor outcome, indicating that HERV-K (HML-2) might be a novel candidate prognostic biomarker for HCC.