High level of ezrin expression in colorectal cancer tissues is closely related to tumor malignancy

AIM: To investigate the ezrin expression in normal colorectal mucosa and colorectal cancer tissues,and study the correlation between ezrin expression in colorectal cancer tissues and tumor invasion and metastasis.METHODS: Eighty paraffin-embedded cancer tissue samples were selected from primary colorectal adenocarcinoma. Twenty-eight patients had welldifferentiated,22 had moderately differentiated and 30had poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma. Forty-five patients and 35 patients had lymph node metastasis.Forty-five patients were of Dukes A to B stage, and 35were of C to D stage. Another 22 paraffin-embedded tissue blocks of normal colorectal epithelium (> 5 cm away from the edge of the tumor) were selected as the control group. All patients with colorectal cancer were treated surgically and diagnosed histologically, without preoperative chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The immunohistochemistry was used to detect the ezrin expression in paraffin-embedded normal colorectal mucosa tissues and colorectal cancer tissue samples.RESULTS: Ezrin expression in colorectal cancer was significantly higher than in normal colorectal mucosa (75.00% vs 9.09%, P < 0.01), and there was a close relationship between ezrin expression and the degree of tumor differentiation, lymph node metastasis and Dukes stage (88.46% vs 50.00%, P < 0.01; 94.28%vs 51.11%, P < 0.01; 94.28% vs 51.11%, P < 0.01).