Immunohistochemical analysis of nm23 protein expression in thyroid papillary carcinoma and follicular neoplasm

We aimed at assessing the significance of nm23 gene expression in papillary and follicular carcinomas, the two most common differentiated thyroid carcinomas.

During a cross-sectional study, 173 paraffin blocks, including 131 papillary thyroid carcinomas, 12 follicular carcinomas and 30 follicular adenomas were stained with nm23 marker by immunohistochemistry method. Cytoplasmic staining in more than 10% of the tumor cells was considered as positive, and alpha<0.05 was established as the level of statistical significance for the evaluation of the correlation between nm23 expression and age, sex, tumor size, vascular /capsular invasion and lymph node involvement.

nm23 was positive in 40% of the follicular adenoma, 67.2% of the papillary carcinoma and 66.7% of the follicular carcinoma. p value was more than 0.05 in the assessment of the relationship between nm23 and all of the above-mentioned parameters in differentiated thyroid carcinomas. nm23 expression did not significantly differentiate between follicular adenoma and carcinoma.

According to our results, there is no relationship between nm23 immunoreactivity and age or sex of the patients. Also, nm23 cannot be considered as a useful marker for the evaluation of invasion in differentiated thyroid carcinomas or in distinctions between follicular adenoma and carcinoma.