Lesion human leukocyte antigen-E is associated with favourable prognosis for patients with oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Objective To investigate the clinical significance of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-E levels in oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).Methods The levels of HLA-E immunostaining in ESCC lesions and 47 corresponding adjacent normal tissues were measured using immunohistochemistry. The correlation between the levels of immunostaining and clinical parameters was analysed.Results This study analysed 110 paraffin-embedded primary tumour lesions and 47 case–controlled paracancerous tissues that were surgically resected from 110 patients with ESCC. Positive immunostaining for HLA-E was observed in 88.2% (97 of 110) of ESCC lesions and 29.8% (14 of 47) of normal oesophageal tissues. There was no correlation between HLA-E immunostaining in ESCC lesions and clinicopathological characteristics such as lymph node metastasis, tumour–node–metastasis stage and differentiation grade. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis revealed a significantly better prognosis in patients with higher levels of HLA-E immunostaining than in those with lower levels of HLA-E immunostaining; overall survival was 28.6 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 23.2, 34.0) versus 15.3 months (95% CI, 11.5, 19.1), respectively. Furthermore, multivariate analysis showed that the HLA-E level was an independent prognostic factor in patients with ESCC.Conclusion A higher level of HLA-E immunostaining was associated with favourable survival in patients with ESCC.