Liver-intestine-cadherin is a sensitive marker of intestinal differentiation during Barrett's carcinogenesis.
BACKGROUND
Histopathologic differentiation between the stages of Barrett's carcinogenesis is often challenging. Liver-intestine (LI)-cadherin, an intestine-specific marker, is involved in intestinal metaplasia development in gastric and colon cancers and could be of value in diagnosis and differentiation.


OBJECTIVE
To examine the expression of LI-cadherin in the sequence of Barrett's carcinogenesis and to evaluate its association with clinicopathological data.


METHODS
LI-cadherin expression was immunohistologically investigated, by use of anti-CDH17 antibody, in gastric mucosa (GM) biopsies taken from the cardia (n = 9), in Barrett's esophagus (BE) without intraepithelial neoplasia (without IEN) (n = 9) and BE with low-grade IEN (n = 11), and in esophageal adenocarcinoma (ADC) (n = 13).


RESULTS
The immunoreactivity score was highest in adenocarcinoma (mean IRS = 4.0), and dropped gradually from BE with IEN and BE without IEN (mean IRS = 2.0) to cardia mucosa (IRS = 0). Similarly, the intensity of staining and the percentage of positive cells increased during the sequential stages of BE carcinogenesis. Comparative analysis showed that LI-cadherin expression was significantly different between cardiac epithelium and ADC. Also, percentage of positive cells in GM was significantly different from that in BE with IEN. LI-cadherin IRS was lower for tumors with poor differentiation than for moderately differentiated tumors, but the difference was not statistically significant.


CONCLUSIONS
LI-cadherin is a sensitive marker of intestinal metaplasia and can be helpful for early histologic diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus; it is, however, not significantly different between BE with and without IEN, and cannot be used to distinguish between these.
Department of Digestive Tract Diseases, Medical University of Lodz, Str. Kopcinskiego 22, 90-153, Lodz, Poland. annazlo@wp.pl
Anna
A
Mokrowiecka
Sarah
S
Zonnur
Lothar
L
Veits
Jacek
J
Musial
Radzislaw
R
Kordek
Mariusz
M
Lochowski
Jozef
J
Kozak
Ewa
E
Malecka-Panas
Michael
M
Vieth
Arndt
A
Hartmann
D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D000368:Aged; D001471:Barrett Esophagus / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology*; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D015820:Cadherins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D002299:Cardia / Q000378:metabolism; D004938:Esophageal Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D005753:Gastric Mucosa / Q000378:metabolism; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C490584:CDH17 protein, human; D015820:Cadherins