p53 expression as a prognostic marker in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most frequent cancers worldwide with a high mortality. Immunohistochemical overexpression of the p53 protein was correlated with a poor prognosis in various human malignancies, including HCC. In our study, 45 resected HCCs were examined to evaluate the expression of p53 and its correlation with clinicopathological parameters. Immunohistochemical detection of p53 with monoclonal human antibody, revealed its overexpression in 20 tumors (44%), including diffuse positive in 7 cases (35%), heterogeneous in 5 (25%), and focal in 8 (40%). We considered a positive reaction only in the presence of immunostained nuclei in brown shades in more than 5% of the tumor nuclei. To elucidate the significance of p53 in HCC, we correlated its protein expression with major clinicopathological features. We did not observe significant correlation with sex, age, presence of cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis status, tumoral necrosis and tumor size. The density and intensity of p53 revealed significant correlation with histological grade (P=0.008 and P=0.014) and tumor stage (P=0.005 and P=0.007). In conclusion, our results suggest that overexpression of p53 is associated with HCC progression and contributes to disease progression. Moreover, p53 expression may be a valuable marker of HCC prognosis.

Keywords

• p53
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• prognosis
• overexpression