Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 21, 2023; 29(23): 3658-3667
Published online Jun 21, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i23.3658
SGK3 overexpression correlates with a poor prognosis in endoscopically resected superficial esophageal squamous cell neoplasia: A long-term study
Ning Xu, Long-Song Li, Hui Li, Li-Hua Zhang, Nan Zhang, Peng-Ju Wang, Ya-Xuan Cheng, Jing-Yuan Xiang, En-Qiang Linghu, Ning-Li Chai
Ning Xu, Long-Song Li, Nan Zhang, Peng-Ju Wang, Ya-Xuan Cheng, Jing-Yuan Xiang, En-Qiang Linghu, Ning-Li Chai, Senior Department of Gastroenterology, The First Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100853, China
Hui Li, Department of Gastroenterology, Air Force Medical Center, Beijing 100142, China
Li-Hua Zhang, Department of Pathology, The Fourth Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing 100142, China
Author contributions: Xu N and Li LS contributed equally to this manuscript; Chai NL and Xu N contributed to manuscript drafting; Xu N and Li LS wrote the manuscript; Li H, Zhang LH collected the pathological data; Xiang JY, Zhang N, Wang PJ and Cheng YX were responsible for the revision of the manuscript for significant content; Chai NL and Linghu EQ reviewed the literature; all authors issued final approval for the version to be submitted.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 82070682; and Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, China, No. Z181100001718177.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Ethics Board of the First Medical Center of PLA General Hospital (approval No. S2020-251-01).
Informed consent statement: Patients were not required to give informed consent to the study because the analysis used anonymous clinical data that were obtained after each patient agreed to treatment by written consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There are no conflicts of interest to declare.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ning-Li Chai, MD, PhD, Chief Doctor, Senior Department of Gastroenterology, The First Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, No. 28 Fuxing Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100853, China. chainingli@vip.163.com
Received: February 24, 2023
Peer-review started: February 24, 2023
First decision: March 14, 2023
Revised: March 20, 2023
Accepted: May 23, 2023
Article in press: May 23, 2023
Published online: June 21, 2023
Processing time: 112 Days and 7.6 Hours
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Serum and glucocorticoid-induced protein kinase 3 (SGK3) regulate a range of fundamental cellular processes, such as tumor growth, metastasis, autophagy and survival, but SGK3 expression levels in patients with esophageal squamous cell neoplasia (ESCN) and their relationship with the prognosis of ESCN remain unknown.

Research motivation

SGK3 expression levels in patients with ESCN were assessed by immunohistochemistry to investigate the possible role of SGK3 as a prognostic factor.

Research objectives

Ninety-two patients who underwent gastrointestinal endoscopy followed by endoscopic submucosal dissection with complete follow-up data between November 2009 and July 2011 were included.

Research methods

A total of 92 patients who had undergone endoscopic resection for ESCN with more than 8 years of follow-up were enrolled. Immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate SGK3 expression.

Research results

Death occurred in 3 (8.1%) patients in the normal SGK3 expression group and 15 (27.3%) patients in the SGK3 overexpression group. A significant correlation was observed between SGK3 status and death (P = 0.031). The overall survival and disease-free survival rates of patients were higher in the normal SGK3 expression group than in the SGK3 overexpression group during the follow-up period.

Research conclusions

All these results indicate that the overexpression of SGK3 is correlated with the occurrence of death in ESCN patients and that SGK3 might be a useful indicator for prognosis evaluation.

Research perspectives

The sample size of this study was small, and the subjects both came from one hospital. Thus, the results need to be validated by expanding the sample size and performing a multicenter study. A prospective study, similar to this study, is needed in the future to verify the relationship between SGK3 overexpression and mortality.