Background  

Although the presence of serum p53 antibody (s-p53-Abs) before treatment has been shown to correlate with poor prognosis and lymph node metastasis in esophageal cancer, there has been little information about postoperative s-p53-Abs titer and perioperative changes of s-p53-Abs titers in patients with esophageal carcinoma.

Methods  

A highly specific enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to analyze s-p53-Abs in 110 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma before and 1 month after surgery. The cutoff level of 1.3 U/ml was used to indicate seropositive patients. Impact of postoperative s-p53-Abs titer and perioperative changes of s-p53-Abs on survival was evaluated.

Results  

Forty (36%) of 110 patients were positive for s-p53-Abs before surgery and 35 patients (32%) were positive after surgery. s-p53-Abs titer generally decreased after surgery. Among sero-positive patients, the patients who remained sero-positive after surgery (n = 28) had a worse prognosis than patients who showed sero-conversion (P = 0.02). Among sero-positive patients, the nondecreased titer group showed significantly unfavorable survival (P < 0.01). Multivariate analysis revealed that postoperative s-p53-Abs was an independent risk factor for worse overall survival (adjusted hazard ratio = 3.05; 95% confidence interval = 1.11–8.33; P = 0.03).

Conclusions  

Perioperative monitoring of s-p53-Abs titers was useful to identify patients with esophageal cancer with a high risk for tumor recurrence and a poor prognosis. Continuous sero-positive patients and/or nondecreased titer group, even after surgery, showed significantly unfavorable survival.