Brazil. Conception, design, intellectual and scientific content of the study; critical analysis; final approval of the manuscript.
ABSTRACT PURPOSE:To investigate E-cadherin immunoexpression during cervical carcinogenesis.
METHODS:We assessed the immunohistochemical expression of E-cadherin in squamous intraepithelial lesions (SIL -52 cases), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the uterine cervix (23 cases) and also in eight cases of cervicitis.
RESULTS:The results show very different E-cadherin membrane expression levels when cervicitis (88%), SILs (73%) and SCC (17%) were compared. In SILs, higher E-cadherin loss was seen in less differentiated cells in the basal third of the epithelium. This study suggests that the absence of E-cadherin expression in the membrane is a molecular event that is observed more often in SCC of the uterine cervix than in SILs or cervicitis.CONCLUSIONS: E-cadherin is an essential molecule during the process of cervical carcinogenesis and in this context exhibits a different expression pattern according to the epithelial thickness layer.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.