ER-b Expression in Different Thyroid Carcinomas: Immunohistochemical Study, MIRAN A. EL-KORDY, FAHIMA M. METWALY, SAHAR M. TALAAT and AMIRA B. EL-ZAHED
Abstract
Background: Thyroid diseases are more prevalent in females particularly between puberty and menopause and carcinomas of the thyroid are three-times more frequent in females than in males. This suggest a role of estrogen in the pathogenesis of thyroid diseases.
Objective: To evaluate the presence of estrogen receptor beta in different thyroid carcinomas. And to detect if there is differences in expression of ER between different diagnoses.
Material and Methods: In this retrospective and immu-nohistochemical study 41 cases of thyroid carcinomas were obtained from files of Pathology Department, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University between January 2013 and December 2015. Paraffin-embedded tissue sections fixed in formalin were used. Two sections were prepared from each paraffin block; one of them stained with Hematoxylin and Eosin (H & E) for histological re-evaluation, while other was subjected to the immunohistochemical marker (ER-P). The (Allred) score method was used to evaluate immunohis-tochemical staining and the cases were considered positive if showing nuclear immunoreactivity and with score more than 2.
Results: This study was carried upon 41 selected cases including 12 follicular carcinoma, 16 papillary carcinoma, 3 poorly differentiated carcinoma, 3 anaplastic carcinoma and 7 medullary carcinoma. The ER-P positive cases were 37/41 (90.2%) cases. On comparing of both positivity and Allred scoring between the different malignant pathological diagnoses, p-value was (<0.05) for both which was statistically significant. The expression is observed more in well differentiated malig-nant tumors than higher grade tumors. On contrary there were no significant correlation between ER-P expression and age, sex or menopausal status.
Conclusion: ER-P is detectable in different thyroid carci-nomas with more expression in well differentiated malignant tumors than higher grade tumors.