Expression and clinical significance of histone lysine demethylase 5A in ovarian cancer

Abstract

Objective To study the expression level of histone lysine demethylase 5A (KDM5A) in ovarian cancer (OC) and its association with prognosis and clinicopathological features. Methods Paired t-test and Kaplan-Meier analysis were employed to analyze the variation of KDM5A expression level in OC tissue and normal ovarian tissues and its level with survival rate in OC patients, based on the data from GEO and TCGA public databases. The expression of KDM5A in clinically collected OC tissues (51 samples by radical resection and 17 formalin-fixed samples) and normal ovarian tissues (40 samples by surgeries due to benign uterine diseases) was also examined by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) and tissue microarray (TMA). The results were used to draw the expression heat map and protein distribution profile of KDM5A in normal and cancerous tissues. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to plot the survival curve of the 68 OC patients. Chi-square test and Cox regression model were adopted to analyze the correlation between KDM5A level and prognosis as well as pathological parameters. Results According to the data from the public databases and clinical analyses, the expression of KDM5A at both mRNA and protein levels was significantly higher in the OC tissues than normal ovarian tissues (P < 0.05), and the OC patients with high KDM5A expression had poorer prognosis than those with low expression. Analysis of clinical pathological data showed that high expression level of KDM5A was associated with advanced stage by International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) staging (P=0.012) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.005). Conclusion The high expression of KDM5A contributes to the occurrence, invasion and metastasis of OC, and can be used to predict the prognosis of the patients.

Keywords

• kdm5a
• ovarian cancer
• prognosis
• pathological features