Significance of survivin immunoreactivity and morphometric analysis of HPV-induced cervical dysplasia

Abstract

Genomic integration of high-risk human papilloma virus in the nucleus of cervical epithelial mucosal cells leads to epithelial dysplasia. The aim of this study was to determine the relevance of correlation between epithelial survivin expression and the degree of human papilloma virus (HPV)-induced cervical epithelial dysplasia, and to establish the significance of morphometric analysis of the nuclear area in the assessment of the degree of cervical dysplasia. This retrospective study included 99 women with primary, previously untreated lesions, and colposcopic findings indicating dysplasia, in whom a cytological test by Papanicolaou method was interpreted according to the Bethesda criteria as lowgrade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL), high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL), and atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASCUS). We performed human papilloma virus (HPV) typing by PCR for evidence of viruse types 16, 18, 31, 33. After biopsy of the cervical mucosa, we performed hematoxylin-eosin (H-E) and Periodic Acid Schiff (PAS) staining, and immunohistochemical and morphometric analysis of tissue samples. The control group consisted of 12 women without dysplasia and without a verified infection of cervical high-risk HPV. A high statistical correlation between the degree of dysplasia and expression of survivin was found in patients with different types of cervical dysplasia (p = 0.003). We observed a high statistical difference between the area of nuclei at different degrees of cervical dysplasias (p = 0.000). The high-grade cervical dysplasia had a more than 2-fold higher level of ranking in comparison to low-grade dysplasia, and a more than 10-fold higher ranking than the control group without cervical dysplasia.