Abstract: Background and purpose: Glioma is one of the most common intracranial malignant tumors with a poor prognosis. Choline kinase alpha (CHKα) is closely associated with the occurrence and development of gliomas. This study aimed to analyze the CHKα protein expression in glioma tissues and its relationship with prognosis. Methods: A total of 120 glioma patients treated in Department of Neurosurgery, Ningxia Medical University General Hospital from 2017 to 2019 were enrolled in this study. All patients were categorized by World Health Organization (WHO) grading Ⅰ-Ⅳ. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of CHKα. The relationship between the expression of CHKα and the clinicopathological features of patients was analyzed. Kaplan-Meier method was used to analyze the survival of patients. The relationship between CHKα and the survival of patients with glioma was further verified by using the relevant clinical data in the bioinformatics database. Results: Among the 120 glioma patients, 62 were male, and 58 were females. The pathological types included 32 pilocytic astrocytoma, 26 diffuse astrocytoma, 30 anaplastic astrocytoma and 32 glioblastoma multiforme. The positive expression rates of CHKα were 9.77%, 7.81%, 95.03% and 92.90%, respectively (P ＜ 0.01). Sixty patients died by June 30, 2021, and 10 patients were lost during follow-up. The follow-up rate was 91.67%. Kaplan-Meier method analysis showed that the overall survival time of patients with low CHKα expression was longer, the prognosis was better, and the side effect occurrence rate was lower, compared with patients with high CHKα expression (P ＜ 0.01). These results were consistent with the results of bioinformatics analysis (P ＜ 0.05). Conclusion: CHKα is differentially expressed in glioma tissues of different grades, and is correlated with poor prognosis in glioma patients. CHKα is a potential indicator of the prognosis in glioma patients.

Key words: Glioma, Choline kinase alpha (CHKα), Immunohistochemistry, Prognosis