Avaliação imunoistoquímica de neutrófilos e linfócitos no fronte invasivo do carcinoma espinocelular de lábio inferior

Abstract

Patients with lip squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) present favorable prognosis compared to those with intraoral lesion. Clinical staging of lesion is the main way of assessing the prognosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), followed by the histological grading systems. Analysis of tumor budding (TB) and the inflammatory infiltrate in the tumoral invasive front (TIF) can be configured as additional prognostic factors, since for some types of cancers, including intraoral SCC, findings as TB positive, high counting of neutrophils in tumor, blood or both and increased neutrophils/lymphocytes ratio (NLR) represent a worse prognosis for the patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the presence and the NLR in the TIF, and the association of these findings with the histological malignancy grading (HMG) of tumors and the TB in a LSCC sample. The files from the Center of Diagnosis of Oral Diseases, Dental School, Federal University of Pelotas were reviewed searching specimens from excisional biopsies of lower LSCC (LLSCC) and classifying them according to a HMG system. Immunohistochemistry was performed with CD3 and CD66b antibodies for evaluation of neutrophils and lymphocytes, respectively. The antibody AE1/AE3 was used for the identification of TB. CD66b+ neutrophils and CD3+ lymphocytes were analyzed semi-quantitatively in the TIF. From a total of 43 cases, 36 (83.7%) represented well differentiated tumors, 32 (74.4%) showed none TB. There were low neutrophil and high lymphocyte infiltrations (indexes 0.8 and 2.0, respectively) in the TIF, leading to a low NLR in the same region. Therefore, the high differentiation grading, the few BT positive cases and the low NLR in the TIF may be associated with better prognosis in LSCC.