| Background and Objective: Gastric carcinoma is the most commonmalignant tumor. The development of gastric carcinoma is a multi-factorprocess. It is generally accepted that the development of gastric carcinomaprogresses from chronic gastritis to gastric atrophy, intestinal metaplasia,dysplasia and invasive carcinoma. Cell-mediated immunity is the mainmechanism of antitumor immunity of the host. The changes of T cellsubsets may have the impact on the development,progression andprognosis of tumor. Cytokines, such as interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) andinterleukin-10 (IL-10), play an important role in the regulation of lympho-cytes and tumor immunity. In the present study,we investigated the numberof T cell subsets (CD3,CD4,CD8) and the expression of cytokines(IFN-γ,IL-10) at the mRNA level in mucosal tissues of gastric carcinomaand precancerous lesions.Furthermore,we analyzed the association betweenthe number of T lymphocytes (CD4,CD8) and the expression of cytokines(IFN-γ,IL-10) at the mRNA level. This research is aimed at detecting thecharacter of the local immunity in microenvironment, designing the betterway of immunotherapy and enhancing the ability to antitumor immunity ofthe host, so that it might contribute to prevention and therapy the gastriccarcinoma. Materials and Methods: Gastric endoscopic biopsy and surgicalresection specimens were got in the center of Chinese and Japanese ClinicPathology at Dalian medical university from 2002 to 2004. The tissuespecimens included 10 cases with normal gastric mucosa (NC), 12 caseswith chronic superficial gastritis mucosa (CSG), 15 cases with chronicatrophic gastritis mucosa (CAG), 18 cases with intestinal metaplasiamucosa (IM), 15 cases with gastric epithelial dysplasia (GED) and 25 caseswith gastric adenocarcinoma mucosa (GC). All specimens were fixed in10% paraformaldehyde, dehydrated, waxed, embedded in paraffin, sliced inseries. Immunohistochemical method was used to detect T cell subsets(CD3,CD4,CD8) and examine the expression of cytokines (IFN-γmRNA,IL-10mRNA) by in situ hybridization in groups. Rank sum test and rankcorrelation were used for statistical analysis. Results: T lymphocytes mainly distributed to gastric lamina propriamucosa, either sparsely be located in the epithelium of gland, glands andtumor cells or the peripheral lymphoid-like follicle around glands and themass of tumor cell. The positive staining on the cell membranes of T cellsubsets (CD3,CD4,CD8) were all mononuclear cells. The percentage ofCD3 and CD4 positive cells in CSG and GED groups were significantlyhigher than those in NC group (P<0.05), and in CAG and IM groups weresignificantly higher than those in NC group (P<0.01), while there were notdifferent among other groups (P>0.05). The percentage of CD8 positivecells in CAG,IM,GED and GC groups were significantly higher than thatin NC group (P<0.01), while there were not different among other groups(P>0.05). Moreover, the percentage of CD8 positive cells in GC group wasthe highest among these groups. The ratio of CD4/CD8 in GC group wassignificantly lower than that in CSG and GED groups (P<0.05) and that inCAG and IM groups (P<0.01), while there were not different among othergroups (P>0.05). Moreover, The ratio of CD4/CD8 in GC group was thelowest among these groups. The positive staining of IFN-γmRNA and IL-10mRNA were located inthe cytoplasm and nucleus of mononuclear cells or a few glanduloseepithelia and leukocytes. The positive degree of IFN-γmRNA expression in CAG group washigher than that in NC group (P<0.05), and in GC group was lower thanthat in CAG (P<0.05), while there were not different among other groups(P>0.05). The positive degree of IL-10mRNA expression in GC group washigher than that in NC group (P<0.05), while there were not differentamong other groups (P>0.05). The number of CD4 positive cells showed a high positive correlationwith the positive degree of IFN-γmRNA in NC group (P<0.01), while therewere not a clear correlation in other groups (P>0.05). The clear correlationbetween the number of CD4 posit... |
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