Study On Micrometastases In Cervical Lymph Nodes From Laryngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Objective: To approach a method to detect the micrometastases in cervical lymph nodes from laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma based on real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR ) assay. Offer theoretical and experimental evidences for raising the accuracy and chronergy of clinic pathology in micrometastases detection and try to find tumor markers with better sensibility and specificity.Methods: A total of 77 levels from 21 patients were prospectively evaluated by routine haematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining, immunohistochemistry (IHC) and real-time RT-PCR assay. Amplification of cytokeratin 19 (CK19) , squmaous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCA), pemphigus Vulgaris antigen (PVA) mRNA transcripts using real-time RT-PCR was used to quantify cervical micrometastatic burden. Then a cross-check analysis for results of these three methods was executed to evaluate the sensibility and specificity of each method.Results: The cervical lymph node metastatic rates determined by three markers were significantly higher than routine HE staining (p<0.01) ; some levels that were negative by routine HE staining could also detect these three markers, but the expression quantity were significantly lower than those positive by routine HE staining (p<0.01) ; there were not significantly distinctions between the results determined by IHC and routine HE staining (p>0.05) .Conclusions: Detection of CK19, SCCA and PVA using real-time RT-PCR in cervical lymph nodes from laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma can raise the sensibility of micrometastases detection. This assay can be a feasible method for micrometastases detection. It may be helpful for raising the specificity and accuracy of micrometastases detection if these three markers can be applied jointly. IHC has a similar efficiency in detection of micrometastases with HE.