Heterogeneous Periostin Expression in Different Histological Variants of Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma

Periostin (PN) epithelial and stromal overexpression in tumor pathology has been studied according to tumor growth, angiogenesis, invasiveness, and metastasis, but a limited number of studies address PN in thyroid tumors.

Our study aimed to analyze PN expression in different histological variants of PTC and to correlate its expression with the clinicopathological prognostic factors.

PN expression has been immunohistochemically assessed in 50 cases of PTC (conventional, follicular, oncocytic, macrofollicular, and tall cell variants), in tumor epithelial cells and intratumoral stroma. The association between PN expression and clinicopathological characteristics has been evaluated.

Our results show that PTC presented different patterns of PN immunoreaction, stromal PN being significantly associated with advanced tumor stage and extrathyroidal extension. No correlations were found between PN overexpression in tumor epithelial cells and clinicopathological features, except for specific histological variants, the highest risk of poor outcome being registered for the conventional subtype in comparison to the oncocytic type.

Our study demonstrates differences in PN expression in histological subtypes of PTC. Our results plead in favor of a dominant protumorigenic role of stromal PN, while the action of epithelial PN is less noticeable.