I believe that many lymphoma patients can see KI-67 in their pathology reports, so many patients are also very confused, what exactly is KI-67? And what does it mean? Here are some of these questions for you.
01. The expression level of KI-67 and the proliferative activity of lymphoma cells.
Ki-67 is a nuclear antigen, Ki is derived from the city where it was discovered is Kiel (Kiel), Germany, the number 67 is ** in the experimental number, it is expressed in all proliferating cells, is the marker protein of cells in the proliferative stage, so the expression level of Ki-67 can be used as an important indicator to judge the proliferative activity of malignant tumors.
The item KI-67 on the pathology report (i.e., immunohistochemical results after biopsy) of lymphoma patients is usually expressed as a percentage, ranging from 0% to 100%, with higher percentages indicating higher tumor cell proliferative activity in lymphoma.
In general, for lymphoma patients, KI-67 is below 20% to 30% and can be considered relatively indolent lymphoma; KI-67 is between 30% and 80% and is an aggressive lymphoma; More than 80% of KI-67 is a highly aggressive lymphoma.
Some hospitals do not use a percentage for ki-67, but use a plus sign, and ki-67(+) indicates that the proportion of positive cells is less than 10%; ki-67 (++ indicates positive cell ratio between 10% and 50%; ki-67 (++ indicates that the proportion of positive cells is greater than 50%.
02. Ki-67 expression levels and the prognosis of lymphoma patients.
To a certain extent, KI-67 is positively correlated with the proliferative activity of lymphoma cancer cells, so many patients once thought that the higher the KI-67, the worse the prognosis, but is this really the case?
At present, a number of studies have consistently shown that KI-67 has a certain prognostic value for lymphoma, and there is a close relationship between high expression of KI-67 and poor prognosis of lymphoma. But this link is only present in some subtypes of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (diffuse large B lymphoma, follicular lymphoma, etc.) and not in Hodgkin lymphoma.
In addition, although KI-67 has been widely used in clinical practice as an indicator to assess the proliferative activity of lymphoma. However, different findings suggest that there is still a contradiction between the relationship between KI-67 expression levels and the prognosis of different lymphoma subtypes.
Some studies have shown that high expression of KI-67 is inversely associated with the prognosis of lymphoma and its subtypes, for example, higher levels of KI-67 expression tend to have a worse prognosis in follicular lymphoma, and in one study, it was found that patients with follicular lymphoma with high KI-67 expression had a higher risk of disease progression than those in the low expression group736 times; Some studies have shown that the expression level of KI-67 has no obvious correlation or positive correlation with the prognosis of some lymphomas, for example, the KI-67 index of Burkitt lymphoma is as high as 100%, and almost 100% of tumor cells are in the active stage, but Burkitt lymphoma has a relatively high rate.
Finally, I would like to remind everyone in front of the screen that the prognosis of lymphoma patients, as a complete individual, is affected by many factors such as the type, stage, age and ** of lymphoma, and it is necessary to integrate various factors before the overall prognosis can be evaluated, so it is relatively one-sided to judge the prognosis of some lymphoma subtypes simply by relying on the expression level of KI-67.
As a patient facing the disease, you should try to maintain an optimistic attitude, actively cooperate with the doctor to carry out the corresponding **, improve your own compliance, and accept standardized diagnosis and treatment, so as to prolong your life as much as possible and improve the quality of life.
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