Correlations of MRI manifestations with survivin gene expression in primary hepatic carcinoma

To investigate the correlations of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) manifestations with survivin gene expression in primary hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

A total of 84 HCC patients receiving partial hepatectomy in the Surgery Department and Oncology Department in our hospital from April 2011 to May 2014 were recruited. At 1 week before operation, MRI was used to examine the imaging features of liver, a certain size of area was defined and the signal value of each sequence was recorded. HCC and para-carcinoma tissues were collected after operation, and the expression levels of survivin were detected via immunohistochemistry (IHC). All patients were followed up for 30 months after operation, and the Kaplan-Meier survival curve was drawn. The correlations of survivin expression with MRI features and signal parameters of each sequence were analyzed.

There was no expression of survivin in normal liver tissues. In HCC and para-carcinoma tissues, the nuclei of positive cells showed brown yellow. The positive expression rate of survivin in HCC tissues was 76.19% (64/84), which was significantly higher than that in para-carcinoma tissues (20.81%, 20/84) (p< 0.05). The overall survival (OS) of patients with high expression of survivin was 12.5 months, which was significantly shorter than that of patients with low expression of survivin (17.6 months) (p< 0.05). Results of chi-square test showed that the survivin level had no correlations with the MRI scan shape and edge in the tumor area (p> 0.05), but it was significantly correlated with tumor diameter, MRI enhancement features and lymphatic metastasis (p< 0.05). Pearson correlation analyses revealed that the survivin IHC score was not correlated with in-phase T1-weighted gradient-recalled echo (GRE), hepatic arterial-phase T1-weighted GRE, portal venous-phase T1-weighted GRE and equilibrium-phase T1-weighted GRE signals (p> 0.05). Besides, the survivin IHC score was negatively correlated with opposed-phase T1-weighted GRE (r=-0.46, p= 0.038), but positively correlated with T2-weighted fast spin echo signal (r=-0.49, p= 0.025).

Survivin is significantly up-regulated in HCC tissues and associated with tumor growth and lymph node metastasis. Clinical detection of survivin level combined with MRI examination might be beneficial for clinical diagnosis and treatment of HCC.