The clinical features of prostate cancer do not provide an accurate determination of patients undergoing biochemical relapse and are therefore not suitable as indicators of prognosis for recurrence. New molecular markers are needed for proper pre-treatment risk stratification of patients. Our aim was to assess the value of altered expression of syndecan-1 and -2 as a marker for predicting biochemical relapse in patients with clinically localized prostate cancer treated by radical prostatectomy. The expression of syndecan-1 and -2 was examined by immunohistochemical staining in a series of 60 paraffin-embedded tissue samples from patients with localized prostate cancer. Ten specimens from patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia were used as non-malignant controls. Semiquantitative analysis was performed to evaluate the staining patterns. To investigate the prognostic value, Kaplan–Meier survival curves were performed and compared by a log-rank test. In benign samples, syndecan-1 was expressed in basal and secretory epithelial cells with basolateral membrane localisation, whereas syndecan-2 was expressed preferentially in basal cells. In prostate cancer samples, the expression patterns of both syndecans shifted to granular-cytoplasmic localisation. Survival analysis showed a significant difference (P<0.05) between normal and altered expression of syndecan-1 and -2 in free prostate-specific antigen recurrence survival curves. These data suggest that the expression of syndecan-1 and -2 can be used as a prognostic marker for patients with clinically localized prostate cancer, improving the prostate-specific antigen recurrence risk stratification.

Keywords: biochemical recurrence; prostate cancer; syndecans

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