Abstract:Objective To investigate the content changes of human mannose-binding lectin associated serine protease 2 (MASP-2) in peripheral blood and tissues in patients with colorectal cancer and provide reference information for clinical diagnosis and treatment. Methods The content of MASP-2 was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and its expression in colorectal carcinoma tissues and the adjacent tissues was detected by immunohistochemical method. Moreover, combined with the clinical data of the patients, all the results were analyzed at a later stage. Results The content of MASP-2 in serum of the patients with colorectal cancer was significantly lower than that of healthy people (P < 0.05). In addition, the concentration of MASP-2 in the group of patients with poorly-differentiated cancer was higher than that in the group of patients with moderate- or well-differentiated cancer. But there was no obvious difference in the concentration of MASP-2 between the cancer patients with different age, genders, TNM stages, lymphatic metastasis or cancer types (P > 0.05). The positive rate of MASP-2 in the patients with colorectal cancer was higher than that in the normal poeple (P < 0.05). Conclusions The serum expression of MASP-2 was obviously changed in the patients with early-stage colorectal cancer. In addition, it was higher in the cancer tissues than in the paracancerous normal tissue. Collectively, the results showed that MASP-2 maybe play an important role in the oncogenesis and progression of colorectal cancer.