Expression of COL6A1 predicts prognosis in cervical cancer patients

COL6A1 has been shown to play an important role in tumor initiation and progression. The present study is to investigate the clinical significance of COL6A1 in cervical cancer. In this study, the COL6A1 expression levels in 10 paired cervical cancer tissues and the adjacent non-tumor tissues were examined by real-time PCR. The expression of COL6A1 protein was examined in 162 cervical cancer samples by immunohistochemistry, and the correlation of COL6A1 expression with clinicopathologic factors was analyzed. The overall and recurrent-free survival rates were estimated using Kaplan-Meier method and compared with the log-rank test. The prognostic analysis was carried out with multivariate Cox regressions model. The result showed that COL6A1 expression was up-regulated in cervical cancer tissues in compared with that in non-tumor tissues. High expression of COL6A1 was significantly correlated with FIGO stage (P<0.001), tumor size (P=0.025) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.028) of the disease. Moreover, survival analysis showed that high expression of COL6A1 was significantly associated with poorer overall (OS) and recurrent free (RFS) survival (p=0.004 and =0.001, respectively) of cervical cancer patients. Multivariate analysis suggested that COL6A1 expression was an independent prognostic marker of cervical cancer (P=0.029). Thus, COL6A1 may serve as an oncogene in the initiation and progression of cervical cancer, and as a predictor of poor prognosis in cervical cancer patients.