Clinicopathological Correlation of P53 Protein Expression in different Histological Subtypes of Gastric Carcinoma

Abstract

Introduction: Gastric cancer is one of the common cancers after lung cancer worldwide, especially in the developing countries. p53 immunohistochemical expression has been proposed as a potential tool to evaluate the biological behavior of gastric cancer. However, its practical implication in gastric cancer prognosis or treatment by restoration of mutated p53 function is yet to be fully exploited. Hence, this study with the aim of assessing the yield of p53 expression in gastric carcinoma and its relationship with various clinicopathological parameters was formulated. Objectives: To assess immunohistochemical expression of p53 protein in different histological subtypes of gastric carcinoma cases and to study correlation between p53 protein expression and different clinicopathological parameters like age, gender, tumour location, gross pattern, histological types, degree of tumor differentiation and pathological staging in the above said cases. Materials and Methods: This was a hospital based cross-sectional study done over a period of 18 months on 60 cases of gastrectomies with proven histological diagnosis of gastric carcinoma. Observation and Results: Strong p53 expression was frequent among elderly male patients (>60 years) who had ulceroproliferative tumors, located at pyloric antrum belonging to pTNM stage IIIA. In 87% cases, it was expressed, predominantly in moderately differentiated intestinal type with serosal invasion. Also, cases even with no lymph node metastasis showed p53 expression. Conclusion: Few findings were contradictory to other similar studies e.g. lymph node negative cases showing P53 expression does not support the hypothesis of predicting lymph node status by p53 expression. No significant correlation between p53 expression and different clinicopathological parameters in gastric carcinoma cases was seen. Keywords: P53, immunohistochemical, clinicopathological, histological subtypes, metastasis