Immunohistochemical Study of Retinoblastoma Protein (Prb) Expression in Cervical Carcinomas and Their Premalignant Lesions

Abstract

The retinoblastoma gene was the first tumor suppressor gene identified that was altered not only in retinoblastomas but has been described in a wide variety of human neoplasms. The retinoblastoma gene encodes a nuclear phosphoprotein that in its hypophosphorylated stat plays an important role in regulation the cell cycle, thus preventing from tumor formation. This study was designed to determine pRB expression in a group of cervical tissues comprised of normal, premalignant and malignant lesions. A total of 60 cervical tissue samples were included in this study. 50 archival tissue biopsy samples comprised a risk group for cervical neoplasia; these were selected from histopathology files of Al-kadhimya teaching hospital, Al-Ulwiya teaching hospital, Al-Yarmouk hospital, Medical City department of teaching laboratories, and from four private laboratories. The remaining 10 normal cervical postmortem tissue biopsies were obtained from the institute of forensic medicine and considered as control group. Immunohistochemistry was done for detection pRb expression. The results of this study found that there were significant differences of pRb expression between CINII/III or ISCC and normal cervical tissue (p<0.01, p<0.05 respectively). There was no significant difference between CIN I and CIN II/III (p>0.05). There were no significant differences between CIN I or CIN II/III and ISCC in relation to pRb expression (p>0.05).This results suggest that Rb protein expression may be important in the pathogenesis of cervical carcinoma.