title: VEGF expression, microvessel density and dendritic cell decrease in thyroid cancer.
abstract: Thyroid cancer is one of the five most common cancers in the age between 20 and 50 years. Many factors including the potent angiogenic vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and different dendritic cell types are known to be related to thyroid tumourogenesis. The study was performed to address the expression of VEGF and microvessel density in thyroid cancers and to evaluate the effect of VEGF expression in thyroid tumour cells on the dendritic cells. We investigated 65 patients with different types of thyroid carcinomas: papillary (PTC), oncocytic (OTC), follicular (FTC) and anaplastic (ATC), immunohistochemically with antibodies against VEGF, CD1a, CD83, S100 and CD31. Our results suggest that the expression of VEGF is significantly more often in PTC than ATC (92.3% vs. 60.0%,p= 0.025). The microvessel density marked with CD31 in the tumour border of PTC was significantly higher as compared to FTC (p= 0.039), but not to ATC and OTC (p= 0.337 and 0.134). We found that CD1a- and CD83-positive cells were dispersed with variable density and in OC CD31+vessel numbers were positively correlated with CD83+dendritic cells in tumour stroma (R= 0.847,p= 0.016). We did not find statistically significant associations of the survival of patients with PTC after the surgical therapy with VEGF expression and MVD. In conclusion we may state that VEGF expression in tumour cells of thyroid cancer can induce neovascularization and suppress dendritic cells.
authors.affiliation: Department of General and Clinical Pathology, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Maya
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gulubova
authors.affiliation: Department of General and Clinical Pathology, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Koni
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ivanova
authors.affiliation: Department of General and Clinical Pathology, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ananiev
authors.affiliation: Department of Endocrinology, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Julieta
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gerenova
authors.affiliation: Department of General Surgery, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Aleksandar
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zdraveski
authors.affiliation: Department of General Surgery, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Hristo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Stoyanov
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Medical Faculty, Trakia University , Stara Zagora , Bulgaria.
authors.forename: Tatyana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vlaykova
keywords: CD31; VEGF; dendritic cell; microvessel density; prognosis; thyroid cancer