Increased expression of matrix metalloproteinase-13 in glioma is associated with poor overall survival of patients

Glioma is the most common and aggressive tumor in human central nervous system. MMP-13 plays an important role in tumor aggressive process for it can degrade the extracellular matrix of basement membranes. The present study was to investigate the expression of MMP-13 in clinical glioma samples and its association with clinicopathological characteristics as well as survival of patients. Clinical glioma samples from 286 patients who had not received chemotherapy or radiotherapy were collected, in which MMP-13 expression was assessed by immunochemistry assays. The association of staining evaluation results with clinicopathological characters was analyzed by appropriate statistical analysis. Kaplan–Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to investigate the associations of MMP-13 expression with survival of patients. Results showed that MMP-13 expression was increased in glioma and associated with tumor progression for its expression increased from grade I to grade IV glioma (P < 0.001). Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that patients of glioma with higher MMP-13 expression tend to have shorter overall survival time (P < 0.001). In multivariate analysis, MMP-13 expression was proved to be an independent prognostic factor for patients with glioma (P < 0.001). The present study confirmed the over-expression of MMP-13 and its association with tumor progression in glioma. It also provided the first evidence that MMP-13 expression in glioma was an independent prognostic factor of patients, which might be a potential diagnostic and therapeutic target of glioma.