Immunohistochemistry: a need for standardization

As immunohistochemical techniques continue to evolve, their application to surgical and research pathology is becoming increasingly valuable. Despite this, there is no standard method that can be applied for the analysis of the results of immunostaining to ensure that the selected antibody reacts with the expected antigen specifically. The main goal of standardization in immunohistochemistry is to obtain reproducible and consistent results within each laboratory and comparable results among different laboratories. During the technique, specimens are subjected to different preanalytical, analytical, and postanalytical variables that may affect the reliability of the stain. Therefore, it is important to highlight the different tissue processing and staining variables that may alter the results of immunohistochemistry and assess the magnitude of reported factors in the literature that require standardization.