مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Molecular evaluation of cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression of transitional cell carcinoma cases

Abstract :

Aim: Cytokeratins are multigenic proteins which consist of twenty polypeptides and are formed by intermediate filament of epithelial cells. The quantitatively stated difference in the level of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression is considerable in early detection of bladder carcinoma. This study aimed to evaluate the value of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression in tumor prognosis and recurrence.Material and Methods: Thirty-four cases [Ta(2),T1(19),T2(11),T3(1),T4(1)] diagnosed as transitional cell carcinoma and 10 healthy volunteers as control group were recruited. The quantification of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression was performed by Reverse Transcriptase PCR.Results: The average relative ratio of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression was 11.91±50.01 in 34 cases with transitional cell carcinoma and 0.07±0.12 in control cases. The highest expression of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA was found in T1/G2 as 25.62. No significant correlation was found between the Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression and tumor grading. The results were determined according to the cut-off, specificity and sensitivity were 69.56% and 67.65%, respectively with positive, negative and total diagnostic values as; 85.19%,59.26% and 78.00%. The area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve was 0.917 (p 0.0001). The cut-off value of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression that had the sensitivity (82.4%) and the specificity (81.2%) was determined as 0.1224.Conclusion: We suggest that the combination of increased Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression and pathological tumor classification is an indicator of more aggressive tumor behavior and the cases should be monitored more closely. The evaluation of Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression in urine samples will be quite useful in the diagnosis of increased Cytokeratin 20 mRNA expression in the cases with papilloma or tumor.