HISTOLOGY AND HISTOPATHOLOGY

From Cell Biology to Tissue Engineering

 

Implications on pathogenesis and risk of oral lichen planus neoplastic transformation: an ex-vivo retrospective immunohistochemical study

Diletta Francesca Squarzanti1,4, Tiziana Cena6*, Rita Sorrentino3*, Mario Migliario7, Annalisa Chiocchetti2,4,5, Lia Rimondini3,4,5,9, Barbara Azzimonti1,4,8** and Guido Valente9**

Laboratories of 1Applied Microbiology, 2Immunology and Biomedical Materials, 3Department of Health Sciences (DiSS), Università del Piemonte Orientale (UPO), 4Center of Allergic and Autoimmune Diseases (CAAD) and 5Interdisciplinary Research Center of Autoimmune Diseases (IRCAD), DiSS, UPO, 6Unit of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology, Department of Translational Medicine (DiMet), UPO and CPO-Piemonte, 7Dentistry Unit, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria (AOU) "Maggiore della Carità", DiMeT, UPO, Novara, 8Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per la Scienza e Tecnologia dei Materiali (INSTM) Firenze, Local Unit UPO, Novara and 9Pathology Unit, Ospedale "Sant'Andrea", DiMeT, UPO, Vercelli, Italy
*Tiziana Cena and Rita Sorrentino equally contributed to the work
**Barbara Azzimonti and Guido Valente shared last name co-authorship

Offprint requests to: Barbara Azzimonti, DiSS, Medical School, UPO, Via Solaroli 17, 28100 Novara (NO), Italy. e-mail: barbara.azzimonti@med.uniupo.it


Summary. Aims. To evaluate OPN, MCM7, Ki-67, p53, Bcl-2 and 53BP1 presence, together with the abnormal adaptive CD4 and CD8 T-cell response markers expression in a series of oral lichen planus (OLP) affected patients and assess their combined contribution for a more objective disease classification. Methods and results. In this ex-vivo retrospective analysis, biopsy specimens from 28 adults with a clinical diagnosis of OLP at different progression degree (16 reticular, 2 plaque-like, 1 erosive and 9 mixed type) were collected. Sections were immunohistochemically investigated for the proinflammatory cytokine osteopontin (OPN), alpha-beta CD4 and CD8 positive T cells, DNA replication licensing factor (MCM7), proliferating cell marker (Ki-67), apoptotic and tumor antigen (p53), apoptosis modulator (Bcl-2) and cellular response regulator to double-strand breaks tumor suppressor p53-binding protein 1 expression. Statistical analysis revealed that 53BP1 is highly represented among the OLP study patients (p<0.05). Moreover, on the basis of the quantification results of the highly expressed parameters, two illness categories with different severity were evidenced. The classification hypothesis was confirmed by i) OLP lesion persistence, ii) the development of oral severe lesions in the patients belonging to high grade activity OLP group (HGA-OLPs) and iii) the ascertainment of the same evidence both in the oral squamous cell tumor controls (OSCC) and in HGA-OLP cases. Conclusion. This study completes the scenario with respect to early detection, thanks to a more precise histological analysis, for rationalizing the clinical and histological findings toward a sharable international disease scoring system. Histol Histopathol 34, 1015-1024 (2019)

Key words: Oral lichen planus, Oral squamous cell carcinomas, Chronic inflammation, DNA damage response, Neoplastic transformation and classification

DOI: 10.14670/HH-18-104