Expression of p53 and her2neu in serous ovarian carcinoma with different grades of differentiation : Immunohistochemical Study

الملخص EN

Objective : To assess the rate of immunohistochemical expression of Her2 / neu and P53, and their coexistence in serous ovarian carcinoma in relation to the grade of differentiation as a prognostic parameter.

Methods : Thirty cases of serous ovarian carcinomas and their corresponding paraffin blocks from 2008-2009 were submitted in this study in the Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, Kufa University.

Ten biopsies of normal ovarian tissues were considered as control group.

ABC method was used to determine the expression of Her2 / neu and p53 in these cases.

Statistically Chi square and regression tests were used by the help of SPSS version 10, using the P value significance at level < or 0.05 and 0.3 respectively.

Results : p53 overexpression was detected in 13 cases (43.3 %) while her2 / neu was detected in 8 cases (26.6 %) of serous ovarian cancer with 6.6 % coexistence overexpression of both markers.

None of the normal ovarian tissues revealed immunohistochemical expression for both p53 and Her2 / neu, with significant level of expression between malignant and benign tissues (p < 0.001).

p53 overexpression was reported more frequently in higher grades of differentiation with significant level of expression (p < 0.05) this indicates that serous ovarian tumors with positive p53 expression are biologically bearing more aggressive behavior, while her2 / neu expression show no positive correlation with the degree of differentiation, the relation about which a lot of debates are still present.

Only 2 cases showed coexistent overexpression of both markers without significant difference with grade of tumor.

Conclusion : p53 expression is significantly found in high grade ovarian serous carcinoma and considered to be a good prognostic parameters, while her2 / neu overexpression has no significant difference among different grades of tumor.

So coexistent overexpression of both markers could not be considered as significant prognostic parameter.