Background and Aims: Resent studies have demonstrated that dual-specificity phosphatase 2 (DUSP2) exerts a tumor suppressor function in variety of malignant tumors. However, the expression and function of DUSP2 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are still unclear. This study was conducted to investigate the expression of DUSP2 in HCC tissue and its clinical significance.  
Methods: The surgical specimens and clinical data of 104 HCC patients treated from January 2010 to December 2014 were collected. The DUSP2 expression in HCC tissues was determined by immunohistochemical staining. The relations of DUSP2 expression with the clinical characteristics and prognosis of the patients were analyzed. The risks factors for tumor-free survival rate and overall survival rate of the HCC patients were determined by Cox proportional hazard model.
Results: In the tissue samples of the 104 patients, high DUSP2 expression accounted for 59.6% (62/104), and low DUSP2 expression accounted for 40.4% (42/104). DUSP2 expression was irrelevant to the age, sex and tumor size (all P>0.05), while it was significantly associated with the degree of tumor differentiation (P=0.018), number of tumors (P=0.048), distant metastases (P=0.001) and serum HBV level (P=0.018). Kaplan Meier survival analysis showed that both 3-year disease-free survival rate and 3-year overall survival rate of patients with low DUSP2 expression were significantly lower than those of patients with high DUSP2 expression (25.2% vs. 63.3%, P=0.004; 42.5% vs. 85.5%, P=0.002). Cox proportional hazard model analysis showed that low differentiation degree, distant metastasis and low DUSP2 expression were the independent risk factors for both tumor-free survival rate and overall survival rate of HCC patients (all P<0.05). 
Conclusion: The DUSP2 expression in the tumor tissue is closely associate with the tumor differentiation, number of tumor and metastasis as well as the prognosis of HCC patients. DUSP2 can be used as a molecular marker to predict the prognosis of HCC patients and those with low DUSP2 expression may have a poor prognosis.