| Background The carcinoma of endometrium is one of the three most common malignant neoplasms in women with 20%-30% of malignant neoplasm of the female reproductive system and about 6% female malignant cancer. The incidence rate of carcinoma of endometrium is increasing in recent 20 years. Thus it is practically important to improve the survival rate of carcinoma of endometrium.In the study on pathogenesis of carcinoma of endometrium in molecular biology, the oncogenes and the anti-oncogenes are found to be more and more important. HER2, which comes from the famiry of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGF), is regarded as an important factor to cause carcinoma of endometrium.The amplification or overexpression of HER2 gene has been reported in many studies on human carcinoma, including mammary cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial carcinoma, and so on. Many researchers investigate the relationship between the amplification or overexpression of HER2 and clinical-pathologic characteristics in carcinoma of endometrium. There is about 10-59 % of overexpression of HER2 in the carcinoma of endometrium. In the single variable analysis on HER2 in carcinoma ofendometrium, it is a receptive review that there is some relationship between overexpression of HER2 and bad prognosis. The stronger the overexpression, the worse the prognosis. The overexpression of HER2 gene always has a negative relation to PR. The deletion of PR exists in many cases of strong staining of HER2, which decreases the response to hormone therapy. However, in the multivariate study, the relation is still unclear and need to be more investigated.PTEN found in 1997 was the first anti-oncogenes with active phosphatase. The gene mutation rate in carcinoma of endometrium is about 32 % -55%, and the ratio is the highest in all of tumors which have been detected. Moreover, the gene mutation of PTEN only exists in endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma, but never in other histologic types of endometrial carcinoma. Some reports show the gene mutation rate in endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma is about 83%. In recent years, many researches indicate that the gene mutation of PTEN is closely correlated to endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma, and thought to be an early event in endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma.Some studies have indicated that the high risk factors are directly correlated to prognosis of malignant cancers. Therefore, how to estimate correctly the risk factors is a key to determine the therapy strategy of malignant neoplasm. The high risk factors (FIGO,1988) that can be estimated involve age, histologic type, histologic differentiation before operation, and stage of disease, myometrial invasion, cervical stromal invasion, lymph node metastasis, capillary-like space involvement, adnexal metastasis, and peritoneal cytology after operation.The patients with early-stage endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma has a better prognosis. So it is very important to diagnose the disease as early as possible, which significantly affects the survival rate of endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma. However, no report on the relationship between expression of HER2 and PTEN in early-stage endometrial carcinoma and high risk factors has been found till now. In the present study, we detected the expression of HER2 and PTEN in early-stage endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma and analyzed the relationship between them.Materials and Methods Fifty-five cases of early-stage endometrioid endometrial adenocarcinoma were diagnosed by Women's Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, and 26 cases of atypical hyperplasia, 11 cases of compound hyperplasia, and 12 cases of Simple hyperplasia were selected as control. The paraffin sections of samples were used to detect the expression of HER2 and PTEN protein by S -P immunohistochemical staining. The relationship between protein expression and the high risk factors, such as histologic differentiation, myometrial invasion and cervical invasion, were studied, and the relationship be... |
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