Correlation of Lgr5 expression with clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer and its diagnostic and prognostic values.

PURPOSE To investigate the relationship between Leucine-rich repeat G-protein coupled receptor 5 (Lgr5) expression and clinicopathological features of colorectal cancer and its diagnostic and prognostic values. METHODS The cancer and adjacent tissues of 98 patients with colorectal cancer undergoing resection in Jiangsu Cancer Hospital from 2011 to 2013 were enrolled. The intestinal mucosal tissue of 50 healthy subjects was enrolled as a control group. Western blot was used to detect the expression level of Lgr5 in colorectal cancer, Kaplan-Meier method to analyze the correlation of Lgr5 expression with the 5-year survival rate, Cox regression to analyze prognostic risk factors for the patients, and receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve to analyze the diagnostic value of Lgr5 of the disease. RESULTS The expression level of Lgr5 in the intestinal mucosal and adjacent tissues was significantly lower than that in the cancer tissue (p<0.05). The 5-year survival in the Lgr5 low expression group was higher than that in the Lgr5 high expression group (p=0.002). Lgr5 was an independent risk factor for the prognosis of colorectal cancer. The sensitivity, specificity and the area under the curve (AUC) of Lgr5 were 90.00%, 79.59% and 0.880, respectively (p<0.001). CONCLUSION Patients with a low 5-year survival rate have a high expression of Lgr5, which is closely related to the clinical staging, differentiation, depth of infiltration, lymph node metastasis, vascular invasion, liver metastasis and distant metastasis. Lgr5 is an independent prognostic risk factor for the patients and a better indicator for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer.