Wild-type VHL Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinomas Are a Distinct Clinical and Histologic Entity: A 10-Year Follow-up

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is an aggressive tumor with 50% risk of metastases at initial diagnosis or at follow-up. An inactivation of the tumor-suppressor gene von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) is present in >70% of sporadic cases by two of three different mechanisms: locus deletion, gene mutation, or promoter hypermethylation.

To correlate the complete status of the VHL gene with clinical and pathologic criteria.

We retrospectively included 98 patients with ccRCC who underwent surgery between 2002 and 2005. VHL gene deletions (71 of 98; 72.4%), mutations (68 of 98; 69.4%), and promoter hypermethylations (13 of 98; 13.3%) were screened by gene copy analysis, gene sequencing, and methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification, respectively.

Relationships between VHL subgroups and the studied criteria were analyzed using chi-square and Student t tests. Survival was analyzed with the log-rank test and Kaplan-Meier curves.

Compared with ccRCCs with two events (66.3%), tumors with no or one genetic event (33.6%) were associated with a higher nuclear grade IV (p=0.02), metastases (p=0.04), sarcomatoid component (p=0.01), dense lymphocyte infiltrate (p=0.013), and vascular endothelial growth factor overexpression (>30%) (p=0.003), which was also an independent factor after multivariate analysis. Furthermore, wild-type VHL tumors (no inactivating event, 11.2%) were associated with nodal involvement (p=0.019), and patients with this type of tumor had a specific survival of 33 mo compared with patients with ccRCCs having one or two VHL inactivating events (107 mo; p=0.016). The retrospective design with small number of wild-type tumors was a limitation of this work.

This long-term study (10-yr clinical follow-up) confirms that ccRCCs with wild-type VHL are highly aggressive tumors that need to be formally identified.

Among activated VHL tumors, the wild-type subgroup defines an aggressive phenotype with worse survival rates, suggesting that these tumors must be more thoroughly screened.