Background:
Hepatoid adenocarcinoma of the stomach (HAS) has been recognized as a rare primary gastric
tumor characterized by hepatocellular carcinoma-like histology. HAS often causes diagnostic confusion with conventional gastric adenocarcinoma (CGA) due to the difficulty to detect hepatoid differentiation solely based on findings from
hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining. Hence, HAS should be distinguished from solid-type CGA based on their different biological behaviors. β-catenin is highly expressed in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is involved in the
maintenance of tumor initiating cells, drug resistance, tumor progression, and metastasis.
Methods and Results:
Given the dearth of HAS cases, systematic examination of the expression of β-catenin in HAS
remains under-explored. In this study, 14 cases were subjected to immunostaining with with AFP, β-catenin, glypican3,
hepar-1 and CerbB-2. In parallel, the clinicopathological characteristics of these patients were collected. We detected
statistically significant difference in the expression of β-catenin (P = 0.000), glypican3 (P = 0.019), and hepar-1 (P =
0.007) between HAS cancer tissues and the adjacent non-cancerous tissues. Furthermore, a significant correlation was
observed between the expression of β-catenin in HAS cancer tissue and adjacent tissue (Pearson correlation coefficient:
0.686, P = 0.007). Moreover, in cancer tissues, a significant correlation was observed between the expression of β-catenin
and survival time (Spearman correlationcoefficient= - 0.482, P = 0.003). However, we found the expression of β-catenin
did not correlate with the degree of tumor differentiation and tumor size, age, gender, serum AFP levels, microinvasion,
and metastasis (P > 0.05).
Conclusion:
Our findings establish β-catenin as a useful marker that can distinguish HAS from CGA and may improve
the early diagnosis to guide the appropriate and timely treatment of HAS patients.