Aim: The immunohistochemical study of E-cadherin in gastric carcinomas, related to tumor aggressiveness factors (invasive and metastatic potential).
Materials and methods: The studied material was gastric resection specimens taken from of 60 patients with gastric cancer, during 2009. The tissue was processed using standard histopathological technique, which allowed the assessment of the well-known morphological parameters of prognostic value. Later on the specimens has undergone immunohistochemical processing for E-cadherin (NCH-38 clone), to evaluate its expression in relation with these prognostic parameters.
Results: E-cadherin was positive in 65% from gastric carcinomas, with highest positivity index for well (80% cases) and moderate (17.64% cases) differentiated intestinal type tumors, while a large number of poorly differentiated tumors (55.55%) were E-cadherin negative. Among diffuse type carcinomas, the majority of advanced stage tumors (50% of serosal invasive tumors and 100% of peritoneal disseminated tumors) and also a high number of tumors with vascular and lymphatic invasion (50% and respective 80% cases) represented the E-cadherin negative category (54.54%). The E-cadherin staining was also negative in 75% of lymph node positive diffuse type carcinomas and in all metastatic tumors.
Conclusions: We found that irrespective of histologic type, the E-cadherin expression was reduced to negativity in advanced stages of gastric carcinoma.