High expression of CXCR-2 correlates with lymph node metastasis and predicts unfavorable prognosis in resected esophageal carcinoma

CXC chemokines have been reported to play critical roles in tumor growth, angiogenesis, invasion and metastasis of various human cancers. However, expression of CXC chemokines type 2 (CXCR2) and its association with clinicopathological characters and patients' prognosis in esophageal cancer are scarcely reported. We retrospectively collected clinicopathologic characteristics of 95 esophageal cancer patients undergoing esophagectomies. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of CXCR2. The survival was analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate and multivariate analyses were then performed to determine the relationship between CXCR2 and the clinical characteristics and to analyze whether CXCR2 expression was a significant independent prognostic factor for esophageal cancer patients. CXCR2 was highly expressed in 57.9 % of the randomly selected specimens. The expression of CXCR2 was significantly related to lymph node metastasis (P = 0.044) and predicted poor overall status in operable esophageal cancer patients (P = 0.012). Cox proportional hazard analysis regression analysis indicated that CXCR2 expression (P = 0.030) and lymphatic metastasis (P < 0.001) may serve as independent prognostic markers for esophageal cancer patients. Our results demonstrate that CXCR2 significantly correlates with lymph node metastasis and is a poor prognostic factor in resected esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.