The relationship between Fanconi anemia complementation group D2 (FANCD2) and early diagnosis, pathogenesis, recurrence, and prognosis in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) was investigated in a retrospective case-control study. The clinicopathological data of patients with NPC were collected. The results showed that FANCD2 was significantly higher in poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma than in moderately and well differentiated carcinoma. FANCD2 was significantly lower in recurrent NPC tissues than in NPC tissues before treatment. FANCD2 was markedly higher in T1-2, stage I-II NPC tissues with a duration of disease shorter than 6 months than in T3-4, stage III-IV NPC tissues with a duration of disease longer than 6 months. Moreover, compared with patients with cervical lymph node metastases, FANCD2 was elevated in tissues from patients without cervical lymph node metastases. Furthermore, the NPC patients in the high-FANCD2-expression group exhibited a higher recurrence rate than the patients in the low-FANCD2-expression group. Finally, the disease-free survival rate of the high-expression group was significantly lower than it was in the low-expression group. Therefore, FANCD2 is associated with the occurrence, differentiation, and cervical lymph node metastasis of NPC. With the development of NPC, FANCD2 is down-regulated. FANCD2 may be a molecular marker for the early diagnosis and prognosis of NPC.
Keywords: Fanconi anemia; clinical significance; head and neck tumor; immunohistochemistry; nasopharyngeal carcinoma; prognosis.
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