Expression of growth-regulated oncogene-1, hepatocyte growth factor, platelet-derived growth factor-AA and soluble E-selectin and their association with high-risk human papillomavirus infection in squamous cell carcinoma of the uterine cervix

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the clinical significance and prognostic value of growth-regulated oncogene-1 (GRO-1), hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), platelet-derived growth factor-AA (PDGF-AA), soluble E-selectin (sE-selectin) and high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV; types 16, 18/45, 31 and 33/52/58/67) infection in cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC). A total of 426 cases were enrolled in the present study, of which 292 cases were patients with CSCC, 43 were patients with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) and 91 were healthy controls. Luminex xMAP technology was used to detect the serum levels of GRO-1, HGF, PDGF-AA and sE-selectin in all cases and two-channel fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to determine HPV DNA in cervical scrapings from CSCC and CIN patients. The results demonstrated that the serum levels of GRO-1, HGF and sE-selectin were significantly higher in patients with CSCC compared with patients with CIN and the healthy controls (P<0.0001). Compared with the CIN patients, the HPV positive rate in the CSCC patients significantly increased (P=0.013). The four factors were correlated with certain clinicopathological variables of CSCC patients to a certain degree (P<0.05) and the levels of HGF were closely associated with HPV infection (P=0.039). The receiver operating characteristic curves demonstrated that HGF obtained the highest diagnostic value compared with the other three factors. Multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that the serum levels of HGF (P<0.0001), FIGO stage (P<0.0001) and pelvic lymph node metastasis (P=0.001) were independent prognostic factors in patients with CSCC, while high-risk HPV infection did not show any significance in this analysis. These results demonstrated that HGF may be a useful prognostic biomarker rather than high-risk HPV types in patients with CSCC.