Expression of absent in melanoma 2 in breast cancer and its clinical significance

Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2) in breast cancer tissues.

Methods A total of 118 pairs of cancer tissues and adjacent tissues from breast cancer patients were selected. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of AIM2 in cancer tissues and adjacent tissues, the relationships between AIM2 expression in cancer tissues and clinicopathological characteristics were analyzed. Kaplan-Meier survival curve was used to analyze the relationship between AIM2 protein and survival of breast cancer patients; COX regression analysis was used to explore the influencing factors of tumor-free survival and overall survival of breast cancer patients.

Results The positive rate of AIM2 in breast cancer tissues was lower than that in adjacent tissues, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05); the immunohistochemical score of breast cancer tissue was lower than that of adjacent tissue, and the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05); the expression of AIM2 in cancer tissue was correlated with tumor diameter, lymph node metastasis, clinical stage and intravascular tumor thrombus (P < 0.05); Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that patients with low AIM2 expression in breast cancer tissue had shorter overall survival and disease-free survival (χ²=9.072, 6.101; P=0.004, 0.015); COX multivariate regression analysis showed that AIM2 (OR=3.387; 95%CI, 1.033 to 21.440; P=0.047) was an independent influencing factor of tumor-free survival in breast cancer patients.

Conclusion AIM2 is lowly expressed in breast cancer tissues, and it suggests that the prognosis of breast cancer patients is poor.