Significence Of Angiogenisis In The Diffierential Diagnosis Of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Object:Angiogenesis,the sprouting of new capillaries frompreexisting ones,is an important component in manyphysiological and pathological processes.For solid tumors togrow beyond 2mm3 in size, there is a strict requirement forangiogenesis.Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) plays animportant role in angiogenesis by actin as a potent inducer ofvascular permeability as well as serving as a specific endothelialcell mitogen.The extent of tumor-associated angiogenesis,measured as VEGF and microvessel density (MVD), has shownto be indicators of assessing tumor angiogenesis and correlatingwith the prognostic outcome in several malignant neoplasms.Few data have been reported on the angiogenic response inlymphoprolifertive diseases. In this study, the VEGF and MVDhave been assessed in reactive lymphoid hyperplasias andnon-Hodgkin's lymphomas. The expression and clinical rele-vance of the two factors was determined.Patients: Thirty NHL and twenty reactive lymphoidhyperplasias patients with initial biopsies. The former includes14 males, 16 females, covers 13-76 years and the latter includes13 males, 7 females,covers 12-74 years.Methods: The expression of VEGF and microvessel countswas immunohismically assessed by polyclone antibody VEGFand antibody against factor Ⅷ-related antigenwith dilution 1:50.We used the streptoavidin-biotin-peroxi-dase complex (SABC)techniques. The intracellular VEGF immunostaining wasassessed using a semiquantitative scale (-,not detected, +,lowerthan 5% , ++,5%～15%, +++,higher than 15%). The numbers ofvessels at ×400 field was measured in microvessel "hotspots"(i.e.microscopic areas containing the most dense collections ofmicrovessels that first were identified under lowpowermangification) with the use of an Olympus microscope, BX41(Olympus, Tokyo, Japan). Vascular density was defined byaveraging the number of vessels in the three most vascularareas. Control included replacement of primary and secondaryantibody with PBS.The effect of VEGF was analyzed with thecontinuity Χ2 test or Fisher`s exact test or Wilxon test.Thesignificance of changes in microvessel number between groupsof tissues was determined with the parametric (t`test) andnonparametric (Wilcoxon test) analysis of variance.Correlationbetween VEGF andvascular density was determined by correctedSpearman Rank correlation.The level of significance was set to5%.Results: 1.Positive ratio in NHL and reactive lymphoidhyperplasias were 93% and 75% respectively.There were nosignificant difference in incidence of VEGF expression(0.1