Lesion HLA-F expression is irrelevant to prognosis for patients with gastric cancer

Alteration of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antigen expression has been supposed to play critical roles in progression of malignancies. However, clinical significance of the non-classical HLA class I antigen HLA-F remains largely unknown. In this study, HLA-F expression in 277 primary gastric cancer (GC) lesions was analyzed by immunohistochemistry. Data revealed that HLA-F expression was observed in 71.1% (197/277) of the GC lesions. Lesion HLA-F expression was unrelated to the clinicoparameters such as gender, age, depth of tumor invasion and disease stage. Survival analysis revealed that HLA-F expression in GC lesion was unrelated to patient prognosis (p = 0.190). The mean overall survival time (MOS) for lesion HLA-F negative and positive patients was 11.3 months (95% CI: 9.3–13.3) and 13.9 months (95% CI: 10.5–17.3), respectively. In conclusion, our study provided the evidence that HLA-F expression was unrelated to prognosis for patients with gastric cancer.