Correlation Between Thymidine Phosphorylase Expression and Sex of Patients in Colorectal Carcinoma

Abstract

The present study was carried out to determine the TP status in colorectal cancer and to correlate molecular alterations with sex and other clinicopathological findings. Out of 129 surgically resected colorectal cancer patients, 51 tumor samples (23 males, 28 females) were randomly analyzed by immunohistochemical techniques using primary antibody for TP and LSAB2 detection kit. Despite the lack of significant correlation between patients’ sex and most other clinicopathological parameters, the mean tumor size in males (5.7174±1.8453 cm) was significantly (p=0.016) more than females (4.4643±1.8453 cm) in this study. Out of 51 postoperative colorectal tumor samples, 24 (47.1%) showed positive TP expression. Unlike other clinicopathological parameters, TP immunostaining was significantly correlated with tumor size (p=0.007), lymphatic invasion (p= 0.036) and sex of patients (p=0.002). The prevalence of TP positive immunostaining was significantly higher in males than females (66.6% versus 33.3%, respectively). Due to the importance of high TP expression in predicting the tumor responses to fluoropyrimidines, the results of the present study possibly show the role of sex hormones in TP expression and angiogenesis. This finding might be important in being considered as a valuable prognostic or predictive marker in clinical settings.