Hyaluronic acid binding protein 1 (HABP1) is reported to overexpress in various cancer tissues and may therefore contribute to oncogenesis. However, the status of HABP1 expression in cervical cancer (CC) remains unknown. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of HABP1 and its relationship with clinical characteristics in patients with CC.

Immunohistochemistry was used to explore the expression of HABP1 in 30 cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia (CIN) and 118 CC specimens compared to 10 normal cervical specimens.

HABP1 expression was found to be positively higher in CC than in CIN2/3 cases (P = 0.020). Moreover, clinicopathological analysis showed that HABP1 overexpression was associated with advanced FIGO stage (P = 0.001), poor histologic grade (P = 0.013), large tumor size (P = 0.025), LVSI (P = 0.024), deep stromal infiltration (P = 0.001), and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.023). Multivariate analysis suggested that HABP1 overexpression was an independent factor for disease-free survival (DFS) (hazard ratio 3.082; 95% confidence interval 1.372-7.501; P = 0.007).

The present data provide evidence that HABP1 overexpression predicts CC with high-risk factors and may therefore serve as a new molecular marker for the prediction of DFS in these patients.