Abstract
BackgroundEndometrial carcinoma is a common malignancy of female genital tract. Insulin-like growth factor is known to elicit estrogen-induced mitogenic activity and anti-apoptotic effect in endometrial tissues.MethodsThe retrospective study investigated the expression of insulin-like growth factors, estrogen receptors and their associations in endometrioid adenocarcinoma (EAC) from 80 EAC patients in immunohistochemistry, and 58 EAC patients and 42 control patients in quantitative RT-PCR. The Pearson correlation analysis was used to analyze their correlations with clinic-pathological parameters.ResultsOur results showed that insulin-like growth factor-1 and insulin-like growth factor-2 mRNA levels were higher in tumor tissues and tumor-adjacent tissues than those in control cells, and were inversely correlated with the malignancy of the tumor with a positive correlation with ERα and ERβ expression. Insulin-like growth factor-1R protein expression was correlated with clinical stage, and insulin-like growth factor-2R protein expression was inversely correlated with histological grade.ConclusionsInsulin-like growth factor system plays an important role in estrogen-induced endometrial carcinogenesis, and overexpression of insulin-like growth factor-1R in the advanced endometrioid adenocarcinoma is not estrogen-dependent.
Highlights
Endometrial carcinoma is a common malignancy of female genital tract
Expression of Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) and Estrogen receptors (ER) in endometrioid adenocarcinoma at mRNA and protein levels We tested the expression of IGF-1, IGF-1R, IGF-2, IGF2R, Insulin-like growth factor binding proteins (IGFBP)-3, ERα and ERβ mRNA on 58 tumor tissue samples and 31 tumor-adjacent endometrial tissue samples from patients with Endometrioid adenocarcinoma (EAC) and 42 normal endometrial tissue samples, using RT-PCR
ERα immunoreactivity was strongly positive in normal endometrium and atypical hyperplasic endometrium with a positive staining rate ranging from 93.9% to 100%, while 73.8% of endometrioid adenocarcinoma exhibited the positive immunoreactivity to ERα with a strong positive staining rate of 12.5% (Table 3)
Summary
Endometrial carcinoma is a common malignancy of female genital tract. Endometrial carcinoma is the most common malignancy of female genital tract in the United States [1]. Endometrioid adenocarcinoma (EAC) is the most common type of endometrial carcinoma, accounting for more than 80% of the cases [2]. ERα is the predominant estrogen receptor in human uterus, and is required for endometrial proliferation in response to estrogen exposure [4]. ERβ has been found in both the normal and malignant endometrium, and decreased expression of ERβ is associated with the malignancy of the endometrial cancers [8,9,10]. The association of ERα and ERβ expression with clinical features of endometrioid adenocarcinoma has not been well studied yet
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