Evaluation of apoptosis in classical Hodgkin's lymphoma comparing different methods

Apoptosis is a type of programmed cell death (PCD) with specific morphologic changes in the dying cell. Since classical Hodgkin's lymphoma (cHL) is characterised by abnormalities in the apoptotic pathways, apoptosis may play a central role in its pathogenesis. Our purpose was to estimate the apoptotic process in cases of cHL using 3 different, widely accepted methods, comparing their results as well as with those found in the literature.

Detection of apoptosis was performed in 76 cases of cHL, using morphological criteria, TUNEL assay (TUNEL apoptotic index; T-AI) and immunohistochemical detection of active caspase 3 (casp3-AI) on paraffin embedded sections.

When both apoptotic (MA) and mummified (mummi-I) cells were evaluated by morphological apoptotic index (morph-AI), the median value was 10.3%, while for MA and mummi-I the results were 3.4% and 6%, respectively. T-AI and casp3-AI values were 10.9% and 1.9%, respectively. Morph-AI was significantly higher in the mixed cellularity (MC) subtype (p7equals;0.047rpar;, while MA was significantly higher in the male subgroup (p7equals;0.03). MA was strongly correlated with casp37horbar;AI (p=0.01).

Detection of apoptosis has become an important parameter in understanding tumor pathology and in designing antitumor treatment. A combination of methods is proposed in order to estimate accurately this form of cell death.