Increased expression of protease-activated receptors 2 indicates poor prognosis in HBV related hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective To investigate the potential role of protease-activated receptor 2 (PAR2) in the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods A total of 202 HCC patients who underwent liver resections were included. Tissue microarray was established with specimens of both HCC and paired adjacent liver tissues. PAR2 expression was detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC) assays.. A semi-quantification method was used to define the expression level of PAR2. The correlations between PAR2 expression and clinical features of patients with HCC was explored. The association of different PAR2 expressions with both overall survival and disease-free survival was analyzed. Results Results showed that the expression of PAR2 in HCC tissues was higher than that in paired para-cancerous liver tissues (4.12 +/- 3.55 vs. 2.71 +/- 2.56, P < 0.001). Higher expression of PAR2 was associated with poor differentiation (P < 0.001) and advanced tumor-node-metastasis stage (P = 0.015). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis indicated that HCC patients with high PAR2 expression had decreased overall survival (P = 0.033) and disease-free survival (P = 0.043) compared to patients with lower PAR2 expression. Multivariate analysis indicated that PAR2 expression (P = 0.032) was a significant independent prognostic factor for both overall survival and disease-free survival (P = 0.032; P = 0.032, respectively). Conclusion Our data revealed that PAR2 expression was increased in HCC. High PAR2 expression was correlated with both decreased overall survival and disease-free survival in patients with HCC. High PAR2 expression indicated a poor prognosis.