Study of p53 Expression in Carcinoma Cervix and Normal Cervical Epithelium

Introduction: Cervical carcinomas are one of the leading causes of mortality in women worldwide and various screening methods are developed for early detection, which includes clinical, pathological and molecular methods. Biomarker- p53 protein is useful in differentiating neoplastic from non-neoplastic and CIN lesions and the p53 expression is also a prognostic marker for cervical carcinoma as it correlates with other clinico-pathological prognostic parameters. Aim and objectives: To study expression of p53 in cervical carcinomas of various histological types and normal cervical epithelium and Correlation of p53 expression with the histopathological grade of cervical carcinomas. Materials and methods: 40 cases of cervical biopsy/ hysterectomy specimens of carcinoma cervix and 20 cases of hysterectomy specimens for other gynecologic causes received at department of pathology, CAIMS, Karimnagar from January 2014 to October 2015 were examined for gross and microscopic features. Immunohistochemistry was used to study the p53 expression in normal and neoplastic cervical epithelium. The p53 expression was correlated with various clinicopathological prognostic parameters. Results: Of the 40 cases of carcinoma cervix, 80% cases showed p53 positivity. The predominant histological type of carcinoma cervix positive for p53 was moderately differentiated squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). One out of three cases of Adenocarcinoma (ADC) was p53 positive. The single case of CIN III showed p53 positive cells in all the layers of squamous Radhika Mucharla, Pingle Prathyusha, Geeta Voolapalli, T. Ravinder, Vemula Sreenivas. Study of p53 Expression in Carcinoma Cervix and Normal Cervical Epithelium. IAIM, 2019; 6(7): 37-48. Page 38 epithelium. The p53 positivity showed a statistically significant association with the microscopic type of carcinoma cervix (p value=0.019). The p53 positivity increased with the age, parity, clinical stage and grade of the disease. Conclusion: The expression of p53 was high in premalignant cervical lesion in invasive cervical carcinoma compared to normal cervical epithelium. Our study indicates that p53 is a powerful prognostic marker.