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Updated: Jun 9, 2026
Establishment and Evaluation of a Risk Prediction Model for Pathological Escalation of Gastric Low-Grade Intraepithelial Neoplasia
Published on: February 16, 2024
Low Ki-67 proliferation index is an indicator of poor prognosis in gastric cancer
Hee Eun Lee1, Min A Kim, Byung Lan Lee
1Department of Pathology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea.
Background And Objectives:
We designed this study to assess the biologic significance of Ki-67 proliferation index (PI) in gastric cancer.
Methods:
Gastric cancer tissue from 245 patients were immunostained for Ki-67. Ki-67 PI was defined as the percentage of tumor cells positive for Ki-67. In addition, we have previously evaluated the expressions of nine epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT)-related proteins. The relationship between Ki-67 PI and clinicopathologic parameters, patient survival, and EMT data were sought.
Results:
Low Ki-67 PI was correlated with poorly differentiated histology (P = 0.034), an advanced T stage (P < 0.001), and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.011). Also, the low PI group was found to have a significantly worse prognosis than the high PI group (P = 0.003, log-rank test). Multivariate analysis revealed that Ki-67 PI remained as an independent prognostic factor (hazard ratio (95% CI) = 0.670 (0.450-0.999)). Furthermore, greater expressional changes of EMT-related proteins were found to be significantly associated with low Ki-67 PI (P = 0.025).
Conclusions:
These findings suggest that Ki-67 PI is an effective tool for predicting survival in gastric cancer. In addition, we found that an invasive property presented as EMT-related protein expressional changes was inversely correlated with a proliferative activity in gastric cancer.
