E-cadherin Immunohistochemical Expression in Gastric Carcinoma

Abstract

Introduction: Carcinoma of the stomach is a disease with a grave prognosis. The revelation of the genetic and molecular basis of gastric cancer has helped the development of targeted therapies which has the potential to improve survival. Decreased expression of Epithelial cadherin (E-cadherin) in gastric carcinoma is one such genetic alteration which could help in targeted therapy and prognostication. The objective of the present study was to identify E-cadherin immunohistochemical expression in gastric carcinoma and its correlation with histopathological features. Material and Methods: Gastric biopsies and surgical specimens from a tertiary care center in South India were included and assessed by light microscopy and immunohistochemistry (IHC). Results: Aberrant E-cadherin staining was seen in 42.8% of gastric adenocarcinoma. Aberrant staining was found with disproportionately high frequency in diffuse-type (95.5%) when compared to intestinal-type (18.6%) and mixed type (20%) with very high statistical significance with P <0.001. All (100%) poorly differentiated tumors had aberrant E-cadherin staining while only 21.2% of moderately differentiated and 12.5% of well-differentiated tumors had aberrant E-cadherin staining and this was statistically highly significant with P <0.001. In this study, there was no significant association between E-cadherin with age, gender, nature of the specimen, site of the tumor, size of the tumor, lymph node status and tumor invasion. Conclusion: This study emphasizes the importance of identification of aberrant E-cadherin expression in gastric carcinomas which in turn helps in selecting patients for novel therapies which might improve the prognosis of this grave disease.

E-cadherin expression – Significance in gastric carcinoma

“…According to previous studies, positive staining was defined as strong golden brown membranous staining similar to normal epithelial cells. E -cadherin staining pattern was observed under light microscope and based on the pattern of staining, the expression of E cadherin was classified as normal and aberrant expression 12,13 (Table 1). Data analysis carried out statistically using Chisquare test with calculation of p-value.…”