Systemic lupus erythematosus frequently involves the kidneys leading to significant morbidity and mortality. It is classified according to glomerular involvement pattern but tubulointerstitial lesions are also important for progression and prognosis, as seen in other kidney glomerular diseases. One of the cell types which participate in this process are mast cells. The aim of the study was to analyze the counts of tryptase-positive and chymase-positive mast cells in lupus nephritis classes II, III and IV. Material consisted of 42 renal biopsies from patients with lupus nephritis; 11 class II, 9 class III and 22 class IV. Chymase-and tryptase-containing cells were stained by immunohistochemistry and counted microscopically. Mean count of chymase-positive mast cells was 9.8/10 high power fields (hpf) for the whole group, 4.66 for class II, 11.89 for class III, and 11.51 for class IV. The mean count of tryptase-positive cells was 18.6/10 hpf for the whole group, 7.65 for class II, 25.57 for class III, and 21.23 for class IV. The differences between lupus nephritis classes were significant both for chymase-and tryptase-positive cells. Tryptase-but not chymase-positive cell counts showed a correlation with the creatinine level (R = 0.35). These results suggest that mast cells are involved to a different degree in the pathogenesis of lupus nephritis depending on the class of the disease.
Prostatic carcinoma (PC) is one of the most frequent cancers in men. Molecular pathogenesis of PC remains poorly understood. Translocations involving ERG were found to be the single most frequent genetic event. A strong correlation exists between this translocation and ERG positivity on immunohistochemistry. The rate of ERG positivity and its relationship with other clinicopathological parameters differ between populations and between studies; in particular, there are few data on ERG-positive PC in Eastern Europeans. In the present study, tissue microarrays of unselected PC cases were constructed and standard immunohistochemistry for ERG performed. The results were compared with the basic pathologic prognostic parameters. The group under study consisted of 113 cases; 52 (46.02%) were positive for ERG. The positive cases showed a slightly higher Gleason score (median 6 vs. 7). The majority of ERG-positive cases showed nerve bundle invasion and were also less likely to be prostate confined than negative ones. In conclusion, the frequency of ERG-positive PC in our series is similar to Western populations, and they show some unfavorable prognostic features.
The current treatment of breast cancer, the most frequent malignancy found in females, requires the study of biomarkers. The standard set of these includes at least an estrogen receptor, a progesterone receptor and a HER2 receptor, although many other factors have been shown to contribute to the prognosis. Tissue microarrays have been introduced to decrease costs and workload of immunohistochemistry applied to large collections of samples. The aim of the study was to test the performance of this technology on three basic biomarkers of breast carcinoma in 106 cases of invasive breast carcinoma. Tissue microarrays composed of 3 cores sized 0.6 mm per case were constructed and stained by standard immunohistochemistry. The results were assessed on virtual slides created with an Aperio scanner. A sensitivity and specificity of 0.83 and 0.88 was obtained for the estrogen receptor, 0.76 and 0.88 for the progesterone receptor, 0.69 and 0.96 for HER2. In conclusion, TMA technology may give results comparable to the diagnosis based on whole sections, and the clinicopathologic correlations for the immunohistochemistry performed by both methods are fairy similar.
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