Abstract: Objective To investigate the relationship between the levels of high mobility group protein A2 (HMGA2) and insulin like growth factor II mRNA binding protein 3 (IMP3) in colorectal cancer tissue with the clinical pathological characteristics of patients,and their diagnostic value for lymph node metastasis.Methods This study focused on 123 patients with colorectal cancer admitted to Qingdao Central Hospital,University of Health and Rehabilitation Dciencesour from December 2022 to March 2024.Real-time fluorescence quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to detect the expression of HMGA2 and IMP3 mRNA in cancer tissues and adjacent tissues.Immunohistochemical SP method was applied to detect the expression of HMGA2 and IMP3 proteins in different tissues.Multivariate Logistic regression was applied to analyze the influencing factors of lymph node metastasis in colorectal cancer patients.Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was applied to analyze the diagnostic value of HMGA2 and IMP3 in patients with lymph node metastasis.Results Compared with adjacent tissues,the expression of HMGA2 and IMP3 mRNA in cancer tissues of colorectal cancer patients was obviously increased (P<0.05).The positive expression rates of HMGA2 (χ²=36.390,P=0.000) and IMP3 (χ²=54.877,P=0.000) proteins in cancer tissues were higher than those in adjacent tissues.The expression of HMGA2 and IMP3 showed obvious differences in different tissue differentiation,tumor diameter,T staging,and lymph node metastasis (P<0.05).Compared with patients without lymph node metastasis,patients with lymph node metastasis exhibited statistically significant increases in both HMG-A2 and IMP3 mRNA levels in their cancer tissues (P<0.05).HMGA2 and IMP3 were both risk factors for lymph node metastasis in colorectal cancer patients (P<0.05).The area under the curve (AUC) of the combined diagnosis of HMGA2 and IMP3 was 0.940,which was obviously larger than the AUC for the individual diagnosis of HMGA2 (Z=2.168,P=0.030) and IMP3 (Z=2.355,P=0.019).Conclusion The high expression of HMGA2 and IMP3 in colorectal cancer patients is correlated with clinicopathological features,and their combination has high diagnostic value for lymph node metastasis in colorectal cancer patients.

Key words: colorectal cancer; high mobility group protein A2; insulin like growth factor II mRNA binding protein 3; lymph node metastasis; diagnosis